Cincinnati Radio: The Nation's Station (1922-1941)

40 years before Ted Turner transformed the struggling at Latte Television outlet into the cornerstone of his media empire. A maker of automobile accessories was creating the original super station in Cincinnati, Ohio. They were operating at 500,000 watts, half a million watts. The only station in the world with that power before or since. At its height, it was called the most listened to and most influential radio station in America. The advertising agencies were in awe of this, and they had to pay a very high price to be on that station. But it was worth it because it was a substitute for being on that one. It was awesome, really. People who began their careers in Cincinnati radio during the Depression years would etch permanent places on the soundtrack of the 20th century. Eddie Alberton was so gorgeous, sort of odd. Read book.

I was going to search down third and two away. Doris Dunn. Ruth Lyons. I did this just as a little novel. I tried to ride to an e-please. The mill's broke. Read skeleton. Do you need me ladies and gentlemen? That's wallet. You got it? Well, let's get it. By the 1930s, this mid-sized Midwestern town was ranked alongside the much larger cities of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago as America's fourth largest production setter for national network shows. The studios were constantly jumping with actors, musicians, conductors, arranges, unknowns, soundment, technicians, and there was the bustle and hustle of a lively bazaar throughout the daylight hours. To me, it was mythical because here was this operation in Cincinnati that just seemed to be all powerful, anchored by the nation's station that made a huge impression on me.

The nation's station. Those words were once recognized by listeners across the country as the longtime slogan of WLW. But its legacy to the nation has been curiously overlooked. Until now. Welcome to the latest installment in a continuing series of documentaries dedicated to the preservation of Cincinnati's unique broadcasting heritage. Featuring original never-before-released recordings made between 1921 and 1941, WVXU and the X-Star Radio Network present Cincinnati Radio, the nation's station. I'm Leonard Malton of Entertainment Tonight. When I wrote my book The Great American Broadcast, I spoke with hundreds of actors, writers, technicians, and performers from the Golden Age of Radio, whose stories hadn't been told before. For the next two hours, you'll hear other stories and other voices from the formative

years of modern media. A time when Cincinnati was a pace-setting influence in an uncharted field. Thanks to a man whose name could once be found on everything from refrigerators to patent medicines to airplanes. Powell, Crosley, Jr. In spite of their massive success during the early 30s, Gene and Glenn are largely forgotten today. In contrast, a vocal quartet from Pickwell, Ohio achieved its early fame at WLW at about the same time. But they went on to expand that renown through records, network radio, and television for the next 50 years. In 1985, Donald Mills, the last surviving member of the Mills Brothers, remembered how they got their start. It was 10 years old. We went to Radio Station at WLW, Cincinnati, Ohio, with a band used to travel with a band doing dancing engagements around through Ohio and Indiana.

They were invited down to do a radio show down there. They took us along with them, as an act with the band. When it's so happened that they let the band go and they kept the Mills Brothers, that's how we were assigned to the WLW since then at the time. I am not sure how much salary they were paid. I think $35 a week apiece. And their mother was their guardian in contact for sign with her. Announcer Sid Tenike, who worked with the Brothers on his famous Doodle Sockers program, roughly recalled how another WLW singer helped move the Mills Brothers out of Cincinnati and into the big apple. A cigarette came down from New York as a single. He played the piano in the same. But he and Tom Rockwell had been lifelong boyhood friends. Now Tom Rockwell was an agent and he had people like this. The thing Crosby, Bruce Eddy, Cadd Callaway, Duke Ellington, the Boswell sisters, the Andrew sisters.

I mean a top agent in New York. These Mills Brothers were out of this world and seek a recognize. And he had several long talks with Tom Rockwell and New York. So one day the Mills Brothers left L.W. And when it came time to look in the file for the contract, the contract was missing. Now I know who got the contract. With in weeks of signing with Rockwell, the Mills Brothers were recording for Brunswick, made a sensational appearance at New York's Paramount Theatre, and broke down when a broadcasting's early barriers by becoming the first African-American performers to star in a sponsored network radio series. We invite you to tune in and hear them at 7.15pm, Eastern Standard Time, every two a day

and Thursday evening, so with a call out there, broadcast the accessible. Thanks. For several years, WLW kept searching for vocal groups that could fill the void left by the Mil's brother's departure.

And at least one of them did. Who says lightning can't strike twice? That's the famous signature song of the Inkspots, if I didn't care, recorded in 1939. But when the Inkspots were at WLW, in 1933 and 1934, they were known as the Four Rift Brothers, or the King Jack and Jester. Not only did the group have different names in those days, they also had a very different style. Now look at your children. Mama's going to work now. And I don't want no swinging in here while I'm gone. I'm Mama Wings. When you're gone, Mama. And another thing, it both definitely comes over here with this big baseball, telling Mama don't allow no swinging in here. All right, we're telling Mama. All right, I'm going to work now, boys. Be good. Goodbye. Goodbye, Mama. See who's that coming in gate there? That looks like hopefully if we did big baseball.

Come in. Oh, what do you say? Well, you're so good. You're so good. I'll come your only swing. But Mama told us not to swing. What? Well, let me back you down. Mama told me. Mama don't get up late in here. No. Mama don't get up late in here. I don't care what Mama don't allow, but play my guitar in here. I don't know why don't get up late in here. Oh, yeah. Hey. Hey. Ah, my God. Alright, let's have a round. And I'll sit down. Look at that man, might be coming in the gate there. Boy, it looks like Mama coming. Come on, let's play one more piece. Folneath, get to the air. Down too. Yes. Mama let them raise a wrist in here. Mama let us raise my D couch in here. by this time Crossley's W-L-W was no longer the only game in town.

In 1923, the U.S. playing card company put W-S-A-I on the air. It was no accident that its prized program was a feature called Radio Bridge. W-S-A-I also had a chair of up-and-coming performers stepping forward to the microphone, such as singer and songwriter Little Jack Little. You whine and dine until half pass forward, take them home and they slam the door. Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!

Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Oh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! N, oh! Ooh! Oh! Ooh! They're all gonna be a little After several fits and starts, another early station was established, WKRC, with call letters that would hopefully make you think of its owner, the CODEL Radio Corporation. When CODEL ran into tough times, WKRC was purchased by the brand new Columbia Broadcasting System.

At the same time, a diminutive theater owner built a new station from scratch, managing to work his name into every station break. By the mid-twenties, many small stations began falling by the wayside. One exception was WFBE, a 500-watt operation that was purchased by the Scripps Howard newspaper chain in 1936, and survived for another 30 years as WCPO. When the makers of bicycle playing carts noticed that listeners had moved beyond radio bridge to other diversions, Powell Crossley and his brother Lewis, business manager of the Crossley Enterprises, purchased WSAI in 1928. The brothers programmed their new acquisition with more local features, building a niche for WSAI as Cincinnati's own station. This free WLW to create a new role for itself as the nation station.

A self-sufficient behemoth able to produce shows that would meet and often exceed the quality of anything found on the networks. On October 8th, Crossley's WLW became the first broadcaster to boost its signal to a new legal maximum 50,000 watts. But only one year later, in October 1929, an eight-year economic boom turned it to a 12-year bust with the crash of the stock market. For workers and businessmen alike, the dozen years to follow would be marked by indelible scars of retrenchment, unemployment, and hardship. And for Powell Crossley and Cincinnati radio, their golden age was just beginning. By 1933, the paradox of widespread poverty in the land of abundance had reached grim proportions.

Fully one-third of all Americans were completely unemployed. Nearly half of those who had jobs were only working part-time. Growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, during the Depression, a boy who listened to WLW during those years would eventually work at the station himself and become one of its best known alumni. The creator of landmark television series, such as Falcon Crest and the Waltons, writer Earl Hamner Jr. Radio was all important because people had very little money. They didn't have the money to go to towns, to see films. They didn't have television so they couldn't sit at home at night and watch a little blue light, and it was free, and the only price you had to pay for the radio itself. So it is no way that you can underestimate the importance of radio during those days. The businessman and Powell Crossley recognized that hard times could create a larger market

than ever for his economy-priced radios. But in order to sell more sets, he needed to persuade potential buyers with the WLW signal that could be heard anywhere. He began putting the pieces in place to give his flagship station the audience reach of a national network. By early 1932, Crossley engineers were conferring with their counterparts at RCA about plans for a transmitter that would give WLW more power than any other commercial station in the world. At the same time, General Manager John Clark was given the go-ahead to build up the station staff. Out-of-work performers in Chicago and New York City began noticing modest-sized audition advertisements in show business trade papers. Said tonight, remembers John Clark, along with a couple of others, they would go to New York. Now there was an impression on, and there was a lot of actors out of New York that were out of work. They would talk to them, interview them, audition them.

Those people were brought down, expensive paid, paid $75 a week, and Crossley would keep them five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten weeks, trying to sell them. Now they didn't kid them. They brought them down and said, if we could sell you, you're it. If not, here's your transportation back to New York. One of the New York recruits was a triple threat talent, a composer, singer, and pianist who was already known to insiders as the harmful little armful. In the words of his longtime guitarist, Al Casey, and now, WLW was ready to give the harmful armful his first real opportunity to reach a mass audience. His name, Thomas Fats Waller. Although he was already known among aficionados in New York, many midwestern radio listeners

weren't necessarily enamored of jazz. No problem. If Fats somehow didn't impress you with his piano wizardry, then he tried to win you over with his formidable talent for singing and comedy. Yeah, I think he couldn't make friends with the devil and hat too. Is that kind of guy? Unfortunately, Waller's gifts of persuasion were lost upon Powell and Lewis Crossley, who had dedicated the WLW pipe organ used on Moon River to their mother's memory. When reports filtered back, that Waller was playing his lively jazz on the instrument, the Crossley brothers were incensed. But as much as Fats loved the sound of the organ, it was a different devotion of Waller's that brought an early end to his contract. What Fats was fired for was the fact that Fats liked his gin. And you bought gin and half-gallon jars, and Fats used to keep this half-gallon jar gin hit behind the organ. Sid Tenheim. Well, Powell Crossley and Lewis found out about it that a UK's was handed down in no uncertain terms.

That they didn't care if Fats Waller was the king of entertainment of all the world. There would be no more gin or anything else in the studio period. So Fats OK, that's a giggle with him, he hit it out in the hall. Even if his stay was terminated abruptly, Waller's time and Cincinnati was invaluable to his career. Many observers feel that the W.O.W. stint taught Fats how to project his a billion personality over a microphone for the first time. And now they've said that when I left on you, I've got to express everything. You know, I feel so effervesome that I've got to do a bit of user-guiding. You got it? Listen to that. I'm walking on air for I've left on my blue days behind. I've learned how to care, yeah, yeah. And that's not really love on my mind. I'm the world's most heavy creature, tell me what can I be? I'll say this about my blues, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch.

Miss Gilpin was the teacher, in the reason we agree on crazy, my, my, my, my, my. May be crazy about me, but I can get that bull, hold it in your hand, keep a set out of town. You can understand, isn't a one combination, pray for him, gee, I'm crazy, my, my, my, baby, I'm crazy about me, yay. I'm the world's most heavy creature, tell me what can I be? Miss Gilpin was the teacher, the other, the same.

You can understand, it's an A1 combination. Very he and she, I'm exasperated about the offering, all freaked out, freaked out, freaked out, freaked out. Two of Waller's biggest admirers were also acquired on another WLW talent expedition to New York. Just a few weeks before her death, Dorothy of Ponce looked back on the days when she and Sister Ethel made numerous appearances on stage, radio and records during the 20s and 30s. We were, we were called about the most popular duo across the United States.

And we felt pretty big about that. The Ponce sisters, Ethel and Dollar Thea, give you, you've got everything. You've got everything, everything on Wallerbound. You've got everything, just what I can't do without. Your smile is like a little, a little, a little, a little. You make my little heart go by, by, by, by, blue. So you've got everything, that's my class and clothes. You've got everything, this, that's these notes. I've got to mention that, on the finals, some things, that's what you've got, everything. Oh, I said, a bullet, no. If I'm about to do wrong, no, I'm about to swing lovable charm, not imagination. I get my inspiration, especially when you're in my arm. Oh, you've got everything, everything. Everything on Wallerbound's got everything, everything, just what I can't do without.

Your smile is like a rainbow, so full of good news. You make my little heart go by, by, by, blue. You've got everything, that's my class and clothes on. You've got everything, this, that's these notes. I've got to mention that, on the finals, some things, that's what you've got, you've got everything. But WLW wasn't only looking for musical performers on those trips to New York, they also held tryouts for people who were looking to advance their careers as announcers or newsmen. I learned that there were auditions conducted in New York by WLW. It was a talent hunt and apparently a periodic talent hunt. And I went along there to that audition and passed, and they offered me a job in Cincinnati.

In only three years, this young newscaster would leave a permanent mark on radio drama and transform the medium. The most revered writer-director in radio history, Norman Corwin. The facilities of WLW on those days were housed on the eighth floor of a factory. My office looked down on Spock spouting chimney of a foundry. And it was a visual association heightened by the fact that my room faced the afternoon sun. And I roasted in 100 degrees of heat when the sun was out. At the same time, the studios were so refrigerated that I literally had to put on a hat and coat before entering them. The content of several shows that emanated from those chilly studios would generate a lot of heat from future generations.

Many no longer pass muster in a more sensitive age, horrified by the very concept of dialect or blackface humor. Not long ago, a noted author characterized the prevailing attitudes of the day as being equal opportunity offensive. Our represent Paula, the country of Paula makes standing south to Central Park, north to 156 feet, west to the river. And he's dying so sure about it. C't ya. Kalak complicated yeahlate who had if 2 bastard that long? Yangt, she did soom. Otherwise, she adopted in more memories, in this proclamation in the Feud, in other words, was the broad octum. I say his. See is the assumption India. Yeah whole. How do you sir? Yeton Jewish. Get out of here. That was last night. Oh shoot. My people has always been backslapping and shaken fool with the Germans from Scotland and our cause is dirty, fool. Will he grow his objective cadence about what I've done, done, gone and did it? Sit it, hoo hoo, touch our poo poo. What?

My country, she like to have 200,000 battleships, 200,000, what you call a bologna. I'm exactly unless they be kosher. Oh, hey, that's my life. Hey, well, hurry up and read it. We only got a half an hour. Indians won't rock much and quick and we go nuts them. Yes, sir. I mean, hey, you watch one. Oh, I know. That's what frogs do. One from the course of jellyfish. The noise they make goes like this. A woman? A woman? A woman? A jolly spiffy? What do you call it? A what? Right away, I'm objecting. And the basis is some constitutional. And besides, there's no profit in it. That's what frogs do. What? Croak. Right, chicken and spinach. Oh, take it late. In the mid-30s, though, men's stroll in blackface routines were not only acceptable, but often wildly popular, among white and African American audiences. On radio, a white man could achieve fame for impersonating a black woman. As W.L.W.'s Marlon Hurt would do later, on Fibre McGee and Molly. Somebody ball for beauty.

But for sheer versatility, no one held a candle to radio's one man theater, Jimmy Scribner. Jimmy Scribner with his lovable Johnson family is ready once more with giggles laughs at you. From the 1930s into the 1950s, Scribner created and played the parts of all the men, women and children, more than 20 separate characters in the Johnson family. Mama and Lucy, you remember, took the money Mama won in the recent prize fight, and took a trip to the Niagara Falls, leaving Papa and Peewee on their own, as it were. Meanwhile, the Deacon, acting on Mama Johnson's orders, is trying to get Papa to sign adoption papers. We find them in the living room. Listen. Sister Johnson told them it just before she left the she is willing to give brother Jerry a home brother. You think if we took him in, we could make something out of him.

In time, he would be the great man and the great servant of the community that you is. Man, you got in this job and go in there. You can look at his eyes and lighten up. Our shop's on. Tell you what you do, Deacon. Get the papers already and bring them up here to the house when it's Deacon. Mama, be home. Then, if it's already with her, it's okay with me. Thank you kindly, brother. You said there was a brother, brother, brother. Thank you. Bye-bye. Nice fellow, Deacon. Yeah, she'll have a brother, brother, brother. That'll do you, man. No more your wife's cracks in the sauce. I'll scare them. What was the last one, Miss John? Sausage scare them. That's when somebody makes somebody jealous and something like, I don't know, it's something I heard the word. Now, I know what it is. Yeah, she'll have, mister. Come in. Good morning, Johnson. Oh, it's the lawyer. Oh, come in, lawyer. Come in, morning to you. I saw you lost all that money on the fight. If you'd have had enough sense to have gone through, what's the fight? Instead of letting your wife

take your place, you would have lost the fight and I would have won. My everything has gone. Oh, now, lawyer. You'll listen, Johnson. Oh, my, he got a gun, Miss Johnson. Law you put that apart, quiet and listen to me. We're all going on a little journey. Journey? I promise the river, Jordan. Yes. You, baby, don't kill us, son. Get ready, Johnson. This is it. A mad man. A man broken in mind and spirit. A maniac with a gun. That's what Papa and P. We are facing. That's all that's left of the lawyer field parts. What will happen tomorrow? If the comedy left few racial, ethnic or class targets unscathed, the depression economy

cast it equally wide and unforgiving net. One surviving document shows that some singers on WLW staff received just $5 a day. The low salaries allowed the station to produce several splashy, large scale productions for NBC, including vocal varieties. Blending groups like the smoothies and the divorce sisters into an enormous ensemble. The show had a sound that coral masters Fred Waring, or Kate Thompson, might have ended. Let me among you, I have never heard before, but let me hear you never hear me.

Oh, we have you, but have you any money, still in combination, would be swell. If you got any money, then you're alright, just put it in shock and then sit tight, hold, sit tight, sit tight, whoa, hold that tiger, whoa, hold that lion, whoa, hold that dog, thank you my money, if you got anybody that's all I want to know. But not too much money, just have enough cash, remember the market that's when you digress, all it's all. Oh, thank you so much, take a little, feel me lookin' by a lot of things, and this is a take of paper that might be shown. What else out of that, I'll know you, as for no, is a root of all evil,

a type of no people, but I'm certain that we've fed your money, but I'm certain that be sunny, yes I'm certain honey, we've fed me a money and you're any of you, not much money, not money, I'm here. Born on September 16, 1888, Powell Crossley, Jr., originally intended to make his name as a maker of automobiles. After several unsuccessful attempts to bring his designs to the marketplace, Crossley thought of profitable niche manufacturing car accessories. In just a few years, while still searching for a way to re-enter the car business, he expanded his operations to include a woodworking plan, that turned out furniture and phonograph cabinets. On February 22, 1921, Crossley's son walked through the door of the family home and made a request that would change

his father's life. It was his son, Powell Crossley, the third birthday. He came home and said that one of the kids down the street had a quote radio toy and he would like to have one. Broadcasting historian, Dr. Lawrence Lichty. Crossley went to the local store that sold radio equipment and found that to buy a ready-made radio would cost something like $125 and that was a lot of money. He was a successful businessman with a plant manufacturing wooden cabinets for phonographs and some other things like that. And he was able to build a set for only $12 or $15 with the parts himself. So his immediate idea was, well, if I can do that, that explains to myself, why the selling for $125 is going to be a big profit margin and all of this. And as he would later say, he was bitten by the radio bug, which is what everybody said at the time. So within just a few months, the Crosby manufacturing company was the largest manufacturer of radio sets in the world.

Crossley certainly had the radio bug so much so that only five months after building that first crystal set for his son. He had a transmitter build and was on the air with his own 20-watt station by July of 21. The station's programming often consisted of Crossley himself giving out the call letters 8CR and playing a record of Song of India from the Victrola into a metal morning glory horn attached to a microphone. 26 years later, Powell Crossley explains some of the reasons for starting his own station. At that time, I was primarily interested in building radio sets. And in doing so, I felt, at my duty, to provide some of the entertainment and programs, without which the receiving sets could not function. So I regarded a broadcasting station as a necessary adjunct to our business of making receivers.

Since the radio market seemed to be growing exponentially, for the moment, Powell Crossley put aside his dream of building his own car. Instead, he applied one of Henry Ford's most important principles to the infant radio business. Powell Crossley was the Henry Ford of Radio. His basic conception was the investment ought to be in the part of the radio broadcaster to have a high quality, powerful transmitter. And that enabled the public to buy less expensive, less sensitive, less selective radio receivers, which of course is what the Crossley Corporation manufactured. Clyde Hanley, former senior staff engineer for the Crossley Broadcasting Corporation, remembers Crossley's words. He said, the more power I can put in the transmitter, the cheaper I can build the radio. And that was his basic concept, the cheaper I can build, the more people are going to be out there to listen to me. So his idea was to get as much power into a transmitter as it could possibly get. For nearly 20 years, this quest for greater and greater power would be the hallmark of

Crossley's involvement with radio. His first receiver sold for only $20 and was a smash success during the Christmas season of 21. By March 1922, Crossley had increased his power to 50 watts, and the government gave his station a new set of call letters, W-L-W. The cost-conscious atmosphere also led to musical performers being drafted as actors and actresses. Now recognized as the Dean of Media Historians. During the early 1930s, Eric Barnal was producing radio shows in Cincinnati from New York advertising agency. In New York, you had a whole city full of actors whom you could use. But in Cincinnati, you didn't have a city full of actors, you had a bunch of performers for a station, and more or more you to relate on them. So that became very versatile people. This was an amazing, really an amazing gathering of people.

For instance, Eddie Albert, you know, as a movie star, he was a acting staff then. I came there as a singer. The time was dry. The moon was low. Twenty minutes later, they said, it reads this and you did. Everybody is pitching in. It was nothing but heaven. And Seymour was also at W-L-W during the early 30s. Best known for starring role in The Life of Mary Marley. And later remembered that during her first three months at the station, she appeared in 300 different shows. There was a very good

reason why. People on W-L-W's acting staff were expected to play just about every conceivable type of part. The scripts could range from comedy to melodrama or Shakespearean tragedy, and they were expected to perform well in all of them. The notion of a radio-repertory company began with W-L-W production manager Ed Byron. His concept was quickly embraced by director's Michael Kent and Charles Lammers, as radio actors Mary Lou Lance explained. Their experience was all staged. Stock companies, I believe that Charlie Lammers had a stock company that ran all over the country, including Clark Gable, by the way. Michael Kent, of course, he was an actor too. He mentioned many modern fiscuits who was an, oh, I guess, in the turn of the century, star, and he worked in her stock company. So I think the whole idea of a stock company was something that moved them a lot. I remember a Christmas program, and Michael Kent was director.

Oh, Merry Christmas, Uncle. God save you. Ah, handbag. Christmas, a humber, uncle. Oh, you don't mean that, I'm sure. I do. Merry Christmas. Oh, don't be angry, Uncle. Come and dine with us tomorrow. What? And sit with you, and that simple and wife of yours, and listen to a lot of bills about Christmas. Never. But why? Why did you get married? Because I fell in love. Because you fell in love. Ah, handbag. I'm very sorry to find you so regimented. You know, I've never quarreled with you, and well, I'm going to keep my Christmas humor if it kills me. So, Merry Christmas, Uncle. Getting an appropriate accent for Charles Dickens, England, may have been a problem for the young Frank Lovejoy. But back in 1935, he was more than grateful for the work. My first major break came when Brock Pemberton selected me for one of the leads in his Broadway production of Chalked Out, which resulted in my touring the country later with pursuit of happiness, which luckily closed and Cincinnati. So, I applied for a job at

radio station W.L.W. in that city, and I became a part of the staff, and, well, I learned a lot about radio. There aren't many survivors left from those years, but there's one thing they agree on. If W.L.W. was a school for aspiring actors, then director Reiko Kent was its very demanding professor. Yeah, he was a hard guy to work with, you know, boy, you know, you had to toe the line. I remember one show I did with him, and it involved the cooking of an egg on a stove. What did he do? We had to get an egg. We had to get a heater. We had to get a pan to put the egg in. He was a stickler for authenticity by gum. In August 1933, Reiko Kent directed members of W.L.W.'s dramatic staff in the first episode of a brand new radio series. The young actress he placed in the title role but played the same part

for 27 years, 7,065 performances without missing a single episode. Although her radio character lived in the fictional town of Rushville Center, Cincinnati would always be the hometown of actress Virginia Payne, and for legendary broadcast creation, Ma Perkins. What is troubling you, Ma? You're daughter Faye? Uh huh. She wants to leave home. Leave home. Why? She wants to leave home and go to cities. What? I don't understand. She isn't a satisfied issue. Oh, you know how to get eaten with me. You can see every day a baby robin standing on the edge of its nest. Keeping ready to take its first hop over to an apron bringing it to him. But how did we see it? She just said baby robin. She wants to spread her wings and slap. That's the lovable Ma Perkins everybody remembers. But during her first few weeks on the air,

she was anything but lovable. Listen to this rare 1933 recording for a completely different perspective on kindly Ma. Ma? Ma? What happened? Where's Eddie? She's gone. She's gone. Ma, what did you say to her? I, I heard her crying down here. I wanted her to come back home here with us. Oh, what are you talking about? You, you sure they don't want really fits and her and June you hear with us. There wouldn't be room for all of them. I didn't know where it is. It just wanted her and June. What do you mean? You, you want to do to leave really fit? But he's a husband, Ma. She couldn't do that. Why not? That's what I'd like to know. Would be the first time woman ever left her husband. And she'd be a lot better off you with us. And with that, no, I can't get away. Oh, Ma. That's what I told her to. You didn't.

There had been a few other early soap operas on the air, but Ma Perkins quickly established itself as the genre's prototype. Soon, WLW was producing several other soaps for the network, such as midstream, the mad hatterfields, and the very first daytime drama ever carried by the mutual broadcasting system. The life of Mary Southern. Max, you're better hurry and get dressed. Well, don't you want your husband to look nice tonight at that big dinner? Oh, of course I do. Max, did you find out anything more about Danny? No, or none of these are young fools. Oh, ma'am, I'm so glad we're happy. We must help Danny. Yeah, I'm sure it hurts your life. Oh, dear. I'll go see who it is, never mind. Well, you were fillers. Is Max home? Yes, he came home early. How Danny? Danny?

Oh, fillers, you've been a crime again. I'm awfully sorry. What is it now? Oh, it's the same thing. Fillers, can't you and Danny reach some agreement? Oh, we'd do for a while. After Danny so downstairs, we made up and everything was perfect. Well, you must keep it that way, fillers. But we argue over nothing. I need things and Danny stumbles around. Well, Max does too. You just ruined my clean floor in the bathroom. But I love him for his very helplessness. I can't. Oh, man, they're all that way, fillers. Oh, Mary, I need your help. Oh, I will help you, fillers. The first thing you have to do is to pull yourself out of this condition. A woman can't let her husband see her this way. Yes, you're right. I lose my feminine wild looking this way. Well, tears dissolve a woman's love. And the next time Danny does something that makes you mad, you just love him all the more. The more you love him, the more you'll be

sorry for hitting him. Is it as simple as that? Just as simple as that, fillers. That's what I do with my old woman. Hey, Mary, where are my drillies? Oh, Max, there's fillers here. And they're hanging right on the back of the door where you left them. Well, it's a swell place for a man's under my brother and my head backer. When you just love your Danny, like I love Max, even when he does things like that, awful than this. Starring Minabelle Abbott and Jay Jostin, the life of Mary Southern was written by one of early radio's most creative personalities, Don Becker. He first became involved with radio as a ukulele virtuoso, but as time went on, the typewriter became his instrument of choice. Becker's reputation as the wonder boy of radio became so widespread that in 1936, the year CBS

began making waves with its Columbia workshop productions, NBC gave Don Becker a weekly anthology series of his own, produced at WLW. Here, he had free reign to write whatever he wanted. Whether it was a tarred Polynesian romance with an experimental musical background. Tonight, the Crosby Radio Corporation presents what we believe to be an innovation in radio drama. Loves of the Southern Sea is a radio drama with a synchronized musical score. By this, we mean that the music was written in direct relations of the dialogue throughout the entire Southern Innit. Or in anything ghostile musical comedy, with singing and dancing gangsters. Good evening ladies and gentlemen, the nation station, WLW and Cincinnati, in cooperation with the National Broadcasting Company, takes place in presenting the world premiere of an entirely original musical comedy created by Don Becker, especially for radio.

It isn't titled, give them a heat. Above all else, Don Becker remains one of the great innovators of daytime drama. Today, he's best remembered for creating one of radio's all-time classics, Life Can Be Beautiful, in 1938. But let's go back just two years earlier. The date, April 27, 1936. You and several other executives are seated around a highly polished table in a mahogany-lined boardroom waiting for the beginning of a closed circuit audition. Your job to help decide whether your company should put its money behind a new Don Becker program for the mutual network. Waterfront wayside, the inn of a thousand lies. Shall we go in?

The makers of Coolock presents Waterfront wayside, the inn of a thousand lives. The waterfront table of men who are derelict, and the reason for which is each in itself, a gripping human drama's far stranger than the most imaginative fiction. The makers of Coolock have arranged to have your company Philip Don, a young and famous author to Waterfront wayside, where he is gathering material for his newest book of that same name. Each chapter of his book will bring you the story of a man or woman, each a human being, fought in the swirling madness of life. And now Mr. Don Becker would like to say a few words to Mr. Panko in New York, concerning the program and a merchandising eye there, he wishes to suggest Mr. Becker. How do you do, Mr. Panko? I've been asked to tell you of the merchandising idea we have in connection with the program Waterfront wayside. We believe that after the program has been on

the air for a period of, let's say, from four to six weeks, the radio audience will be greatly interested in obtaining a copy of the book, which Philip Dorn is supposedly writing, from week to week, and through which we receive these stories. A naturally Philip Dorn is a medical character, but in the mind of the audience he will become a real-life person who is not only an interesting character, but who knows a good story when he hears one as well. The merchandising idea would be to offer the publisher's proof of these stories from time to time. These publisher's proofs could be built up and publicized on your program so that they would take on the proportions of a very valuable gift from your company to your audience. More detailed outline of this plan is ready for your proof. I mentioned it today in order that you may know the ideas we have in mind for Waterfront wayside. Speaking for the art entire cast of Waterfront wayside, I sincerely hope that you've enjoyed our program,

and thank you for listening. All right, Mr. Hancock. Being one of the first radio broadcasters in the early 1920s was a bit like having one of the first internet websites in the early 1990s. People had the idea that this new technology was the coming thing, so you reserved your license and bought the transmitter. Then came the hard part, figuring out what you would actually put on the air. The early tent-like studios draped in heavy monks cloth curtains were filled by a procession of all kinds of volunteer performers, singers, duos, combos, and bands, some of them talented, some of them barely tolerable.

However, one of those amateur bands laid the foundation for a show that would be heard coast-to-coast for a decade. In 1963, the former assistant bandmaster to John Philip Susa, Dr. Frank Simon, recalled, bands in those days were far more popular than they are today. We started this band in Middletown, Ohio as an amateur organization, and I took me years to find the right kind of men who could fit into industry and also were splendid performers on their instruments. For ten seasons, the Armco Ironmaster program was sent from Cincinnati to NBC's Blue Network. Not only did it keep the spirited martial music of Susa, Patrick Gilmour, and others alive, but the show also gave valuable experience to up-and-coming announcers, such as future TV star, Durwood Kirby. The Armco Ironmaster presents Frank Simon and the famous 50-piece Armco band, the Armco players, in another drilling it wouldn't be done, Bravo.

Up goes the baton. Frank Simon leads the Armco band in the national emblem march. However, the Armco band was something unique, having its start as an amateur group drilled by an exacting professional to achieve top-flight results. For the most part, radio listeners were still subjected to hastily thrown together musicals, with screechy sopranos and wavering tenors engaging in mortal combat with semi-classical favorites. In August of 1922, a man with a background in serious music decided enough was enough. I listened to these programs, naturally, and realized that they were being made by technicians or

mechanics, and had no form or substance or anything to them, so I began to make up programs. So I called Powell Crosby's office and made an appointment for the next day at 11. And at 11, I walked into his office and we talked for four hours, and I came out his studio director at $45 a week. And by hiring Fred Smith, he really went a long way in a lot further than most other stations in order to really produce programs for radio. Dr. Lawrence Lichty. Smith was not only the first at www, but one of the first in the nation really to say, look, we have to have a program schedule, we have to have consistency. He did a number of things that just were unprecedented at other stations. One of those unprecedented moves was to write the first dramatic script created especially for radio. With that revolutionary step, Fred Smith forged the first link in a chain

that would include everything from the shadow to CBS radio mystery theater. The first play he wrote for WLW and 1923 was a play called When Love Wakens Note the WLW. And it was the first original play ever written for radio and performed in this country or anywhere else in the world. As a result, Dr. Lichty feels that Cincinnati's WLW can rightfully be considered the birthplace of radio drama, the theater of the mind. The BBC has for years claimed that it did the first drama, original drama and radio, but that was a year later in 1924. Other stations had experimented with taking a microphone and putting in a theater and broadcasting a play, but Smith actually wrote a radio play. Well, it simply had to be written for the microphone. It was written with the idea of radio and not with the idea of the stage. Fred Smith even coined a new word to describe his efforts, combining the words radio and scenario. Today, hardly anyone knows about redarios,

but one of Smith's verbal inventions did become part of the English language when he began a series called News Casting. When the title of a follow-up program, news acting didn't quite catch on. Smith took the basic idea of the time magazine and changed its name to reflect its corporate patron. The result? A part from his groundbreaking work in developing docudromas like The March of Time and Radio Drama in general, Fred Smith also served as something of a proto-disc jockey. It was in this role that he received a rude awakening in 1922. As author Dick Perry explained, WLW would pause now and then so listeners could telephone in requests for recorded music. After playing a fistful of opera selections he loved, Fred Smith was most upset whenever request phoned in but one, was for jazz. He gridded his teeth and played jazz.

And back in 1922, jazz included performers like the red-headed music maker Wendell Hall. Hall was on WLW when he created the first popular song hit developed by radio. Another early singer who achieved fame on WLW during the 1920s was Harry Frankl, who was billed as sing-and-sam The Lawnmower Man. Not long afterward he acquired a new sponsor

and achieved radio immortality for one of radio's most memorable singing commercials, as an author Lynn Mason recalls. Is your old friend sing-and-sang? You know everybody seems to be singing the blues nowadays but don't worry, somebody loves you. Somebody loves you, I want you to know, longs to be near you, wherever you go. Somebody loves you and right from the sky, I mean a spool into someone's mind. Somebody loves you, each hour of the day, when you're around here or when you're away.

Somebody loves you, sweetheart and you see, and the rest from body is me. Just a few years later, sing-and-sams assistant would also achieve national fame as a singer. That was the sound of the 22-year-old Jane Frome.

Not only did radio provide music and drama, but poetry readings were also widespread, and the hands of another W.L.W. performer widely popular. The producer of Tony Juan's radio series in the early 1930s, media scholar Eric Barnau. He talked very close to the mic and very confidentially, and he would always begin with,

are you listening, and then he would go on, and he would become a soulmate to millions of women, that's what it amounted to. He had enormous women's audience, and once a year he published something called Tony's scrapbook, which was excerpts from his broadcast, and that was an additional source of income for him. With that kind of success, it was no surprise when Paul Crossley asked production manager Ed Byron to create a romantic poetry and music series for W.L.W. After a tent at the start in October 1930, it seemed to take on a life of its own, becoming a radio fixture for nearly 38 years. But sleep, dream on, sleep on, care will not sing for me,

no time, drift on the moon river to the sea. In the words of radio historian John Dunning, moon river became the best known, best loved, best remembered local show of the network radio era. To the delight of late night lovers everywhere, moon river was also carried over NBC for several seasons in the 1930s and 40s. The poetry readings were handled by future network stars, such as announcers Bob Brown, Harry Holcomb, Charles Woods, Peter Grant, and for one night only, sportscaster Red Barber. The singers on the show would prove to be equally distinguished, including youngsters like

Doris Day, Phil Bredo, Jeanette Davis, Anita Ellis, Andy Williams, the divorce sisters, and a 23-year-old fresh out of Minnesota who'd come to W.L.W. as part of a trio called the threesome. 70 years later, Eddie Albert still remembers his encounter with an organist who just couldn't help adding a little bit of a jazz beat to the slow dreamy sounds of moon river. I need to play him this and ready to drift through dreams. This is surreal too, and at that time his left hand went off by itself. Come off, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, baby, I can't. No, no, no, this is a funeral, please. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it turned out that he was a pet water. Tony Wands' great success may have served as one of the inspirations for Moon River,

but he wasn't the only performer to capitalize on his radio fame by selling books to listeners. Following in the footsteps of W.C. Handy would preserve the oral tradition of the blues by setting them down on paper and publishing them. In the 1920s, a young man from the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains found his vocation, preserving, and performing the traditional folk songs of his native Appalachia, Bradley Kim Cave. Edgar Bill, manager of Chicago Station W.L.S., suggested that Kincaid take the tunes he'd been singing on the air and compile them into a book. Kincaid was skeptical. His boss wasn't. He says, how many more printed? I said, well, that's 4500, maybe. He said, I wouldn't get less than 10,000 printed. He said, my gosh, he says, we'll go along with you. Get 10,000 printed. Well, he went ahead and printed the old and about a week before they came off the press. I announced it on the air that I had this book, and it could get one for 50 cents, and that mentioned Kincaid was a song, including Barbara Allen. Now, I think we mentioned it three

times, and when the 10,000 books came off the press while we had $20,000. With his career established in Chicago, Bradley Kim Cave moved to Cincinnati and W.L.W.W., he immediately drew more than 50,000 letters in his first four weeks on the air. Then sold 90,000 copies of his book, my favorite old-time songs and mountain ballads. He sent his servant to the town where Barbara was a dwelling. And like Tony Wands, Bradley also became something of a favorite with the ladies. Zell Immales was an eight-year-old who sang with her father's band on W.L.W., and she would watch Bradley Kim Cade's audiences as they filed out of the studio.

It was mostly women, because a lot of times they'd be coming down the stairs. I remember that part up. All these women, they'd been to see Bradley Kim Cave, and Daddy would say, well, Bradley must have given them a good show. Again, these guys all seem awfully happy. So there was mostly women that came to see Bradley Kim Cade. All those stars from the theater and movie worlds had made guest appearances during radio's earliest years. The first wave of performers to really seize upon the audience building potential of this new invention were largely small-time vaudevilleans. Since people wondered what their radio favorites looked like in the flesh, these teams would make theater appearances that were extremely lucrative. These harmony acts could feature a wide variety of material. For example, the sentimental songs of Ford and Glenn. Or this slightly bizarre love letter to the old song.

sung by the monitor boys of W.L.W., Ben Away and Lewis John John. That's the same theme, the common costume, that's the same theme, the barbecue is the bottom way, and down, down, down, down, down, go there. Robert Baw, you're using it that way. Go roll when you're at the ball. Standing shoulder to shoulder with the up to the minute pep, a brother's Joe and Dan Mooney, the sunshine boys. As with show business teams throughout the ages, competing ambitions,

personal differences, and business disagreements, often led to the breakup of even the most popular acts. When Gene Carroll came to Cincinnati in 1929, he joined Ford Rush and Glenn Raul to create a short-lived trio. Within months, Ford was out of the picture, although he stated W.L.W. long enough to create one of the early children's programs, Old Man Sunshine. Well, here's the daily letter from our little friend Red, let's open it and see what he has to say. Ah, there we are, Ford Rush, Old Man Sunshine, and W.L.W. Cincinnati, Ohio. I sure did like your program night before last, so that Mother and Dad,

so that Uncle Hank, and so that some of my gang that was listening at our house, they all got a kick out of my letter to you. Bet you don't know that I pulled out a loose tooth today. Gee, Dad was mad. He asked me why it's done it. I told him I wasn't going to be the only kid in our flock with all my teeth. Well, much more, we'll write you every day. I rabbit is sick and hoping you are the same, your friend Red. Well, that's a nice letter, Red, and we'll be waiting for the mailman each day. You bet we will. While Ford Rush entertained the small fry, his former partners were creating national excitement on NBC. Known as the Quaker Early Birds, at one point, the team of Gene and Glenn was generating even more listener mail than the greatest sensation of the day, Amos and Eddy.

Gene and Glenn, with their famous fictional creations, Jake and Lena. Hello, boy. Hello, Lena. I heard chicken ass teeth. Why you sound pretty gay tonight? I'll tell you that. What's wrong? Well, I miss Carl Jake. Oh, honey. Oh, Jake. Here I am, does he want me? So, he wants me. Does he want me? Thank you, baby. And as much as it is now, 15 minutes and 15 seconds until three o'clock, the mutual lines will be kept open until three with a musical fill. Here's our musical fill, featuring three of the nation's stations finest vocalists. Perhaps to lend an air of continental mystery to their identities,

these ladies used only their first names when they performed on W.L.W. Arthur Godfrey's longtime singer, Jeanette Davis, New York cabaret legend Anita Ellis, and the singing pianist who became a star during her time with Paul Weitman's orchestra, Ramona. Ramona Davis. But I am willing to wait dear, your little lady will not forget. You have a lifetime before you and I'll and don't you come what made? Please don't be blue for the present. When it's so pleasant to hear you say, I can't give you an away baby, but love, baby, that's the only thing I'm plenty of. Baby, dream a wild steam of mine, wish you'd have fun, happiness, and I guess all those little things you've always find for a world.

You let lurk a day and you know, don't matter, baby, I can't be here for anything but help. Lovely Jeanette brings this kind of hit to rhythm and brass, a room with a view. With a view, I've got a room with a view of wonderful you, my next door, dream, cause you're the one, and only one, my heart, really, I don't. And I'm so glad my window pane is just opposite yours, it isn't the moon way up in heaven above, it isn't the stars I'm dreaming of.

I'm only looking forward to the time when I'll be sharing with you all the heaven for two, a room with a view. A pleasant ball with now and not with a grove as we listen to Anita singing, number 10, lullaby. Wasn't it a lucky thing that we got caught in the rain? And found ourselves on the doorstep of number 10 lullaby, and wasn't it a lucky thing? The man came out to explain that we were just the right people, or number 10 lullaby lane.

He said he was also the justice of a piece, so if you're in the neighborhood, and you get caught in the rain, you'll find us waiting to greet you at number 10 lullaby lane. By the mid-1930s, radio comedy, music, and drama have been developing steadily for a decade. The one glaring exception in this parade of progress was news coverage. Trying to protect their own livelihoods, newspaper publishers lobbied the Associated Press and other wire services to withhold news from radio stations and networks.

In 1965, W.O.W. announcer and newsman Peter Grant remembered why newspapers held such animosity toward the new kid on the block during the 30s. For a while, a compromise was reached where radio stations would only receive a limited number of bulletins from a so-called press radio bureau, but it wasn't very effective. It was very bad news. Once a day, we'd get just four 11 o'clock, maybe about 10 30, and it was not committed at all. Pretty old stuff, and looked as though it was just sort of a soft that the press associations newspaper controlled at that time were throwing to the radio station. Tragically, it took a natural disaster to establish once and for all that radio would not be shackled by artificial embargoes on news.

The point was driven home in January 1937, with the flood of the Ohio River. For 19 days, Cincinnati was a city under siege. Nearly one out of every eight people in the area was left homeless. When a crumbling dike threatened to topple several Ohio River bridges, a W.K.R.C. appeal for volunteers brought fourth 54 men bearing shovels and sandbags. Stations turn over their facilities to the police and Red Cross for ongoing emergency announcements. Radio's response to the Ohio River flood has been cited as radio's most outstanding performance during a domestic crisis. NBC called upon Peter Grant and W.L.W. for the majority of the networks on the spot reports. Script of all dramatics, this ter statement from the United States well of Europe Cincinnati tells the true story of the flood in greater Cincinnati. River stage at 10 o'clock tonight, 76.8 feet.

That is approximately 25 feet above flood stage. The Ohio River continues to rise at approximately three tenths of a foot per hour. A peak stage of 78 feet is expected here late tonight. Rains up and down the river from Pittsburgh, Louisville are continuing. Weather forecast for Cincinnati vicinity are light rains and uncertain weather Monday as the general conditions. No actual martial law, but the citizens are responding wholeheartedly to the proclamation of city manager Dijkstra, which is placed industry under emergency restrictions and regulated the activities of individuals for the general good of all. A close checkup at Red Cross headquarters, police and fire department headquarters failed to uncover any casualties. The fires which threatened the entire western section of Cincinnati this morning are reported under control at this hour. Although reports are reaching us constantly of huge gasoline tanks being torn from their foundations in various parts of the community and spewing their highly inflammable contents over the flood waters to be spread over large areas. Right at this moment, a huge tank of 250,000 gallons of gasoline is reported floating down the flood waters toward burn bank. A Cincinnati suburb approximately ten miles down the river from Cincinnati proper.

Since shortly after three o'clock Sunday afternoon Cincinnati has been without street railway service. This step was taken to conserve electric power. Motor buses are in many instances replacing the trolley lines. Red Cross officials report but little sickness among the thousands of homeless and feel certain that the emergency measures adopted and the efficient tactics being employed by the sanitary officers of the city will prevent a serious epidemic of any kind. Traffic across the suspension bridge connecting Covington Kentucky with Cincinnati has for the time being been suspended. But the bridge officials assure us there's no danger of the bridge collapsing. The damage to property in the flood zone is mounting hourly as the flood waters continue to rise. One estimate which appears to be generally accepted places the damage at ten millions of dollars. But an estimate made at this hour would have necessity have to be increased an hour later. It will be weeks before any fair estimate can be made. There's a most urgent need for food clothing and shelter. Medical supplies are also needed but as yet there's fortunately no alarming shortage in medical supplies. Flood boats, great yours which have been rushed from the Atlantic seaboard and the great lakes are now resting in the flood waters.

More to the tops of lampposts and telegraph poles within a few hundred feet of Cincinnati's main shopping street. And within a stone's throw from the city's leading hotels. And the kitchens of these hotels are now being used to prepare meals not for the guests alone, but for the guests of shelter houses filled with refugees taken from the riverfront homes, reserve officers have been mobilized and are augmenting the police force. The disaster created a new radio celebrity but one who wasn't from the Crosley Stables. The heroine of the moment was a thirty one year old woman whose five day marathon of emergency broadcast on WKRC won the public's confidence. 14 years later she would launch the most popular branch of today's TV industry as the first woman to host a nationally televised daytime talk show.

Even now her fellow professionals still regard her with a mixture of wonder, awe and admiration. I think she was sassy and I liked that. Sassy in the sense that she wasn't afraid to say how she felt. There comes a time every now and then when I cannot let the sponsors head the upper hand in the show. At least five days a week I feel that way. She was interesting. She was opinionated. If she didn't like something she had no trouble explaining it. Two people have been killed in seventy five injured so far. Is this is America? And we have nobody to blame for ourselves. Our own bigotry, our own prejudice. Oh I just been so upset over this thing all weekend I couldn't see straight. She knew she could swerve everybody not just Cincinnati the whole dog gone middle west. Radio in the middle west was synonymous with her name. Just so you all agree with me that's all I care about. Do you all agree with me? She was an extraordinary woman and had the same skill as a communicator that Oprah does today.

Of course I like controversy. I like people to think. I like to try to make people think. And I think I think that is one of the great things in radio and television today. Where we are losing out. Where we are not putting enough controversy on there to make people think. I'm nothing like Ruth lines I wish I were. I mean she was my role model. Broadway actress Carol Channing writer Earl Hamner Jr. and talk show icons David Letterman and Phil Donahue. Just a handful of the millions who still remember the trailblazer who built her regional telecast into the highest rated daytime show in America. But even legends like Ruth Lyons need time to hone their talents. In this 1938 broadcast she seems intimidated by the fame of her guest. Still Ruth makes it a point to play the WKRC organ behind singer Irene Ryder as they perform one of Ruth's original songs for band leader Paul Whiteman.

Was it only a few nights ago? We lived in a world of romance. Was it only a few nights ago? The moon was a growin' my heart seemed to dance now it's ending. There's no use pretending I haven't allowed that I've been. By all the lovely words you whispered to me. By the way you held me in your arms tenderly. The magic of mid-summer night. It won't man seem ever so real. You told me you loved me I let you. All of the while I could be I would be. But it does the same old way I'm open miss the land.

By my foolish heart instead of using my head. I was having to be blue by you. Thanks Ruth it's a grand tune. And I guess we all are full a little bit now then. But there's no fooling about our desire to meet our guest of honor this morning. So I say to you introductions are in order. Very definitely introductions are in order to that gentleman who first took popular music and made it really an art. We have the very great pleasure of having with us in the studio this morning.

More than the king of jazz with Paul Whiteman. Good morning Mr. Whiteman. Good morning. Can't tell you how happy we are to have you here. You know you've always been such great favorite in Cincinnati. I suppose you know that don't you? From your fan mail and the reception that you get when you come to town. Well since then that has been awful good to me. How about me changing this interview all around. You know I'm used to being interviewed. How about me asking you a question or two? All right. First of all you always write you write 52 songs as good as this every year. Well I don't know about that Mr. Whiteman. But ever since we started this Sunday morning mat in May we decided that just as a little novel. I think I've tried to write a tune each week. You're right the lyrics too. Yeah. You really knock your brains out. You should know. Yeah the worst part is to try to get an idea. Now if you have any titles do you think about write a tune about them only very well. I've got a good title and nobody's ever been able to write. I've given it to Buddy De Silva and everybody said they can't do it so maybe you ought to take a chance at it. What is it? Well it could be a kind of a torch thing. You're so good to me and I'm so tired of it all.

I'll see what I can do with that by next Sunday. Well Mr. Whiteman just about oh I think it's about a month ago you celebrated your 20th year as a band leader. That's right. And of course we always think whenever we think of Paul Whiteman we think of the many many many other great artists. So if you're developed tonight to mention two of them of course we always think of good old Dean Crosby right off the bat. Well that has a funny twist. We often get so many boys and girls who want to join the organization and always say, gee look what you've done for Crosby or Mildred Bailey or Ramona or Jack Fulton or Morton Downey who they are by the way are all alumni of the band. And we don't feel that we've ever been good to the kids at all. Matter of fact their glory reflects our band I think. I don't think the band would have lasted as long as we haven't had some any wonderful boys and girls that have left the band. Paul Whiteman's enormous popularity during the 1920s helped spark the explosion of big bands during the 30s and 40s. And in those days regular radio exposure was more important than a record country.

Since the use of recorded music was frowned upon by radio stations and forbidden by the networks they placed their microphones in ballrooms, restaurants and nightclubs bringing live music to millions. The movie star to her first national audience. I'm Cora from Doris Day and Doris. She's delighted to thank the show at the time to happy about the whole thing. I'm happy about the whole thing. To have the right look and you speak to my friends.

I'm happy about the whole thing. Whenever we dance. I'm happy about the whole thing. I'm happy about the whole thing. I'm happy about the whole thing. I'm happy about the whole thing.

I'm happy about the whole thing. I'm happy about the whole thing. I'm happy about the whole thing.

I'm happy about the whole thing. I'm happy about the whole thing. I'm happy about the whole thing.

I'm happy about the whole thing. When the American Federation of Radio Artists organized Cincinnati radio performers in the fight for better wages, the cost of producing a program in Cincinnati increased substantially. It became easier and cheaper for ad agencies to move their programs back to Chicago or New York.

After WKRC was sold and became a mutual affiliate, NBC was able to pressure WLW to carry more of its network shows. I'm happy about the whole thing. The finality of the court's decision had an unmistakable effect on Powell Crossley.

I'm happy about the whole thing. After arriving in New York, former production manager Ed Byron developed a new radio series that would star another WLWX Patriot, Jay Josten. The result was a long-running smash.

I'm happy about it. The first play by play announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Red Barber also turned in his notice. I said, well, I understand you're going to get $8,000 at Brooklyn and I'm offering you twice that. Why? And I said, well, for the same reason Mr. Crossley that you went broke five or six times before you came up with WLW.

I want the chance. He got up from back of his desk, came around, put out his hand, and said, I will understand. Good luck. Perhaps it seemed like scant consolation at the time, but WLW's new regional emphasis did not go unrewarded. Two years later, the station was selected as one of the first recipients of a newly created award from the University of Georgia. An award which remains the highest possible honor in the field of broadcasting. We have my pleasure at this time to announce the winners of the George Foster Peabody Radio Awards for outstanding meritorious public service. Large station, WLW, Cincinnati, selected among other reasons for being a pacemaker in the conception and execution of distinctive public service programs and for saving the interest of all groups, including rural, and well as urban listeners.

Thank you, Chancellor Sunfoot. I have spoken for the winner among large stations. WLW of Cincinnati, Ohio is Mr. J. D. Shaw's vice president, Mr. Shaw. Thank you. Naturally, it gives me a very real pleasure to receive in behalf of Mr. Powell Crossley and the entire staff at WLW. This George Foster Peabody Award for Public Service. WLW through the years has been a great station, and we hope it has contributed much to the people of women's serves, the history, and the background of the station. Provide those of us who work there with a continuing inspiration to carry on and maintain one of the finest traditions in American radio. At about the same time, James Shouse was accepting the station's Peabody Award. Four singing brothers were preparing to leave Chicago for a new job in Cincinnati.

At the time, the youngest member of the group was 12 years old, and he still remembers how it happened. My brothers and I were singing about 10 or 12 shows a week, 15 minute shows, and we were making like $25. Andy Williams. And all of the people on WLS were let go because they couldn't afford to pay the union scale for everything, so live radio sort of went out at WLS at that time, and this jockeys took over. But there was a station, WLW in Cincinnati that was still doing live music, and my father sent to WLW whoever's in charge there, Wilcox Gay recording thing that I think we took off the radio in the morning on one of those kind of paper discs. But anyway, they hired us, and we came there and our main job at that time was doing the time to shine radio show five days a week at eight o'clock in the morning. And then my brother Dick and I, we were the only ones in school yet, but we went to school right after the show was over at 815. And we did two theme songs called Time to Shine, which my brothers and I sang, and it was all about shoe polish and if you shine your shoes, and anyway, we're bong, bong, bong, bong, it's time to shine.

So shine your shoes and you wear a smile, shine your shoes, and you'll be in style, sun shines east and the sun shines west. During the early 40s, WLW continued to emphasize a distinctly mid-western identity, with innovations like everybody's farm, which wasn't just the name of a farm show, was also the first working farm owned by a radio station. In 1940, WLW also became the first broadcaster to add a full-time meteorologist to its staff.

But at the same time, it became obvious that the station and its listeners could no longer avoid the storm clouds brewing overseas. With the benefit of hindsight, these broadcasts, by Pioneer Newsman Paul Sullivan, revealed himself as chilling preludes to the horrors of Dachau, Birkenbelson, and Auschwitz. The Nazi government placed the case penalty on the entire Jewish population of the right, a fine of 400 million novels, and by a series of jastics of trees, the government buys them for never a gainful for fashion and occupation. The preuse and the fine, which were designed for the ties of 700,000 Jews in the young child, and the last economic and cultural rights, was ordered by Hitler's people of color. Scaring the number two nothing, and gabbled the minister of propaganda. Hitler! Hitler! Hitler! He's not over! He's not over! It's not... It's not... It's not... It's not... It's not... It's not... It's not... It's not... It's... it's not... It's not... It's not... It's uh... It's not... It's... Deep truth! What was the world do with this particular Jews? And Germany, as you know? The times we saw thousands of the ancient Roman Jews, and otherwise the tribes of our right shall fall off us.

If it is begun to campaign against the Jews, the pricking their activities, and now in their lives almost to the point of extinction. Whether check us what our key wants to see the democracy, now is following the Hitler example. In their toll, there will be strict measures against Jews in that comfort. Well, in two may follow suit. What one wants to happen to your strategic Jews? Many of them believe they've called the problem by taking their own eyes, but that was no solution at all, and merely highlighted one of the most tragic situations anybody would care to see. A system of one should fill us, thus these are startled, these are right, the stage are in, in its harmony, they are causing us, mere challenge, literally signs of essence, by seeing the truth of rest, the Lord wants to hear us. The German Festival Day, a school of country of launching what it calls, a plan to

have a campaign. The country of Britain were hypocritical of the German people. All they have to do is to turn back the pages of their own history to find the treatment of morality. The citizens continue, it will only accentuate the campaign against the Jews. The Jewish panelists had already been ordered to get out for the so-called Aryan section. The movement already started to quote the law of German Jews and Gabbos in the future. There's no sense, no pain in this focus, or there's no escape, I can't understand. I'm feeling there may have a heart of us, but on the main door, when they're feeling it, I'm feeling it, but there's no sense, there's no sense, there's no sense, there's no sense, there's no sense, there's no sense, there's no sense. What's in the gun for these people is one of the best questions of the country. The passing of one era and the beginning of another came on a day when you could see Greta Garbo in the film that drove her into retirement, two-faced woman.

If you were more in the mood for a live stage show, you could stop by the Schubert theater where the Andrew sisters, Jaz Violin, is Joe Venute, and the young K-star were appearing on a grueling six-show-a-day schedule. Author Sinclair Lewis was going to appear at the University of Cincinnati to discuss the possibility of a fascist outbreak in America. There was also an anti-war rally scheduled on the day of his lecture. Current events would render both the lecture and the rally irrelevant by the time Peter Grant faced the microphone. December 7, 1941. Good evening. She panned the day, proved herself a true member of the Rome Berlin axis. She stabbed the United States in the back with the very moment her emissaries were talking peace in Washington. This typically hit larry and treachery tonight as a result of the full-scale warfare between Japan and the United States. The Declaration of Wars expected in Congress tomorrow. The Tokyo government has already announced that the state of war exists between Japan and Great Britain and Japan and the United States.

Hours after this announcement was made, the Tokyo government in Tokyo has the audacity to present Japan's reply to the United States program for peace in the Pacific. Japan's blows fell today on a far-flung arena in the Pacific Ocean. The synchronizing of attacks on the United States positions indicated beyond the shadow of doubt that Japan had been planning for weeks on war with the United States and of the Washington peace conferences where nothing more than a smoke screen to cover up Japanese plans. The Japanese attack from the Philippines to Guam, Wake Island and Hawaii, Japan employed dive bombers battleships and submarines in a multiple attack which clearly indicated the Japanese hope. The hope that Japan can use their dwindling supplies of oil, rubber and other essentials of war to their best effect by employing the element of surprise. Japan's hope to the state of Japan's hope is that she can deliver a knock-out blow against the United States before this country can marshal all her own mighty strengths and a counter-offensive.

Japan, like Hitler, is playing against time. In March 1934, a 26-year-old announcer traveled by train from Florida to Cincinnati. He'd auditioned for the Crosley stations several months earlier and made a good impression, but there weren't any openings. That situation changed quickly when Powell Crosley purchased the Cincinnati Red's baseball team. And wanted a sports announcer now. What he got was a young man who'd eventually find a place in baseball's Hall of Fame. Red Barber. Because Crosley got control of the Reds. He said, well, now that I've got a ball club and they've got two radio stations, I guess out of broadcast some of my games. And he asked the broadcasting department if they had an announcer who did baseball. And they said, no, no, we don't.

You see, the early stage of broadcasting baseball was very, very primitive. Somebody said, well, that boy from Florida, that wore the white linen suit that had such an impressive audition this past summer. He said that he does baseball and said, well, sunpoint. So I got a telegram on the 4th of March from Chet Thomas, who's chief announcer. Would you come Cincinnati, do Red's games, $25 a week? Answer soonest. Well, I answered soonest and was on my way the next day. The valorist, Perney Lombardi, with his teammate, Albert Goodman, perched on third and two away. Yes, sir. These American leaders have heard about this. While Jimmy Fox is almost on the grass, which goes out towards left field, so has Joe Cronin. Charlie Garringer has moved over a little towards second base. And Lou Gehrig is playing his normal possession at first base. The pitch Lombardi swings and misses. Just like one. All bounded out of Bill Dickey's love, the big fella hopped right onto it.

Johnny Allen comes right onto the pitcher's mound, which is right put on the rubbers. Left is also touching, which is on. Go back once. Liberty Lombardi swings. It's a foul ball sliding off the back end of the upper deck. Other stands back the first base. Over there, all the photographers are stationed. And there's not a wild scramble. They're protecting those cameras. Big Ernie grabs himself a handful of dust, rubs it on his hand, touches his cap. He climbs into the batter's box, set to go. The count is one ball and two strikes. There's two away. Goodman has his lead off third. Allen goes around with his arm, pitches on the board. He swings around across Joe Cronin. Joe comes up with it. The long throw to Lou Gehrig, who pulls it out of the dirt and Lombardi is out. There was no run. No hits. There was one error, a wild throw by Bill Dickey. And there was one left on. Goodman was left at third. At the end of six complete innings in this all-star game, the score was two to nothing and favor the national lead. With America's entry into World War II,

Powell Crossley's original vision for a local radio station with national impact would gradually recede into the half-remembered miss of history. Today, the name that once represented cutting edge technology at affordable prices, now adorns nostalgic replicas of long-vanished tube radios. But during its heyday, in the 1920s and 30s, Cincinnati's WLW proudly boasted its slogan, The Nation Station, and hardly anyone would disagree. Then or now. We hope you've enjoyed our presentation of Cincinnati radio, The Nation Station, and we hope you'll be looking for other WVXU productions that preserve authentic sounds from the golden age of Cincinnati broadcasting. Cincinnati radio, The Nation Station, was written by Mark Magistrelli and produced by Mark Magistrelli and Mike Martini, Technical Producer George Zahn, Executive Producer Dr. James C. King.

For Leonard Walton, WVXU, and the X-Star Radio Network, I'm Bill Stingsland. Red came to Cincinnati for the opportunity to do sports broadcasting, but in the 1930s an announcer had to do much more. Games were not heavily sponsored, and teams didn't permit broadcast of most of their home games, fearing that would hurt attendance. So, Red found himself a sign to a variety of routine announcing jobs at both crossley stations. Here's Red with an up-and-coming quartet that would become synonymous with the Glenn Miller Orchestra. From the very soul of New York C. F.O., comes our next melody by the four modern A.S., a song that seems destined to steam roller its way up to popularity speed, is used by the incantations of Chuck.

We have the modern A.S. own colorful interpretation of It was by the incantations of Chuck. We have the modern Arizona Colorful Interpretation of Vimea Bistuchet. Ooh hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo, Vimea Bistuchet, please let me explain. Vimea Bistuchet means that's your name. I'm here, Mr. Shane. Again, I'll explain. It means you're the fairest in the land. I could say, fella, fella, even safe under bark. It's like we call the house me tell you. I'll brand you up and try to explain. I'm here, Mr. Shane. So kiss me and say, you understand. I'm here, Mr. Shane.

Less than two months after Red stepped off the train to Cincinnati. On May 2, 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt would officially inaugurate Powell Crossley's most ambitious radio dream. The nation's won and only 500,000 Watts station. Crossley had successfully petitioned the Federal Communications Commission for an experimental license to multiply his station's power tenfold. Moments before the presidential dedication, millions of listeners to Fred Allen's hour of smiles heard NBC acknowledge the event. Before saying good night, ladies and gentlemen, we want to congratulate station WLW Cincinnati. In only a few moments, WLW will begin to broadcast with 500,000 a half million Watts. Will they come the most powerful broadcasting station in the world?

More than ever, the nation's station. At 9.03 pm, Roosevelt turned a small gold key on his desk, and the unprecedented power began beaming a stronger, clearer WLW signal to more homes and more areas than ever before. At this time, we ask your indulgence while we make minor adjustments in our transmitting equipment. One moment, please. Former Crossley engineer Clyde Henley lets us in on a technical slide of hand that made people think the so-called superpower was even more impressive than it truly was. What we did, the automatic volume control action of a receiver, would nullify the effect and people couldn't tell the difference. So what we do about 20 minutes before the shift, we keep cranking the modulation down. Lower, lower, and lower, and lower. And then when we make the change, the automatic amplifier would bring it back up again with one like a ton of bricks. This is W-A-X-O, the 500,000 watt experimental transmitter of the cross-me-corporation symphony. Soon, people who lived near the transmitter

were insisting they didn't need a radio. They were hearing WLW's mega signal vibrating through their downspouts, fences, and more. Henley says they weren't imagining things. We had talking downspouts, and we had a motel that had a neon sign. Well, the neon sign wouldn't go out because the power was sufficient to keep the neon sign burning all the time. Crossley's march to become a dominant force and national radio didn't end there. In September of 34, WLW became one of the founding stations of the Mutual Broadcasting System. Now, W-A-W found itself producing programs for three networks. NBC Red, NBC Blue, and Mutual. A pack of Avalon cigarettes, please. Yes, sir. Oh, just a moment, sir. Don't forget your change. You never get, but Avalon costs you less.

The wine of always prevalent with Avalon. Good evening, friend. Good evening. This is Dow King saying welcome to Avalon Time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Radio called Hall is now in session. Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we bring you another in the series of famous jury trials. Each week at the same hour in Radio Court Hall, a budget test, re-enactful, you will realize, please, taken from actual court history. That's what you believe in a lie not only on your plantation, they will find a weapon hardy. Whoa, they still found a lie to join a celebration. Now let the old plantation hardy. Well, the time has come, where we must write

the knee on tonight's little program of our concert in miniature. The crazily follows ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, from Cincinnati, by the crazily radio corporation, as an exclusive feature of the Mutual Broadcasting System. This week's issue of the Heathrow La Tom Herald is just off the press, and we're happy to deliver it over your radio with the best wishes of the makers of the January of the State Enola. For coal, wood, gas, and oil. And here they are, Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou. Oh, Betty Lou. Betty Lou. Oh, oh, yes, Mr. Thomas. You are listening to the nation's school of the air, presented by the Education Department of the Nation Station in cooperation with the states of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia, as part of our contribution to education by radio. This is the next 10-rad unsolved mystery from this same station next Monday evening at the same time, together with the solution and fire's winners for tonight's mystery. This program is presented by the Ken Rad's Human Bank Corporation of Owens,

fellow Kentucky, manual photographers of all types of radio cues, and Ken Rad Electric Lampball. Hello, everybody. This is Jack Birch, and he's golf spray gang again. Thank you for lighting up your radio, so we could see your way in. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, it's your vocal variety. In today's episode of this new radio program, we live again. Mark Spencer is suddenly confronted with the ghost of his tragic romance. My lucky break. Hey, this is the truth, Robert. That's why we've designed this brand-new program to Big Ben Gorgos, a weekly cure for those doghouse blues. So, pack your pipe with big Ben. Light up and ponder the words of the ancient philosopher who said, a husband gentleman is a former bachelor whose luck gave out. Romance on the air. Tonight, the romance player is offered to act musical play, the Tristing Tree.

The nation's playhouse is produced in an attempt to create a better brand of drama for radio. For one half-hour a week, the production facilities of WLW combine with the coast-to-coast hook-up of mutual network stations in an effort to develop radio drama into an even more important phase of entertainment than it is today. Hey, hey, what do you say? Hi, oh, what do you know? Get your powerhouse candy for. Powerhouse candy invites you to play a Scrambe Ambie, the only radio game you play for cash with all the answers right before your eyes. Hey, hey, what do you say? Hi, oh, what do you know? Let's write down there where you are with a Powerhouse candy bar. It's delicious. And let's play a game with you. By 1938, WLW and WSAI were supplying 22 shows to the networks every week. A situation that could get quite hectic for an announcer as Peter Grant explained.

Well, the interesting things that I did was to appear on two networks at the same time. This was the days at the beginning of the mutual network. And we fed to them a program for famous jury trials. It took 45 minutes from 10 to 10 to 45. At the same time, from 10 to 10 to 15 on this very same night, we would feed NBC, sing and sing, the barbersaw man. I was the announced on both programs. I had to open on the mutual network for many famous jury trials. So it happened immediately that singing Sam always opened his own program on NBC. So while I was opening on the mutual network, at 10 o'clock, Sam was opening on the NBC network. Then the mutual show was a 45 minute dramatic production. And it was so raised that the first commercial would not come until after 10 to 15. So after opening on the mutual in studio A, I'd go to studio B for Sam was then launched into the songs on his program. And about 11, 12 minutes after 10, he would complete his songs.

And I would pick up with a commercial for a barbersaw, signed the program off. Say goodbye to Sam, lead studio V, go back to studio A, and a few minutes later, I was on reading the commercial for men in the studio in Shea Creek, and then stayed on, signed it off. There's no question about it. Things were looking very good for Powell Crossley and his enterprises at the end of 1934. His assembly lines were working over time, producing the Crosley Shell Vador. The first refrigerator with shelves built inside the door. Fred Astaire, George Gershwin and other follically challenged celebrities were lining up to put their heads into the pulsating helmet of the Crosley ExorVac, a device that claimed it could stimulate hair growth. Crosley even began reviving his long delayed plans

to launch an automobile of his own. But unexpected turmoil would begin to shake his radio tire a little bit at a time until the movements threatened to overwhelm the superpower he'd wangled from the FCC. One of the first tremors was buried deep within an internal W.L.W. memo. Norman Corwin, who joined the staff as a news announcer, remembers. On the second week at the job, I received, among other members, the kept flowing to all departments. A general announcement stating, and I quote, no reference to strikes is to be made on any news bulletin broadcast over our stations. That rule seemed to me, young as I was, highly irregular and dangerous for the country's most powerful station, especially at a time of great labor unrest. I assumed somebody in that large organization would catch it and see its on wisdom and cancel it. But two days later,

again, memorandum appeared in slightly altered language, reading. Our news broadcast will not include mention of any strikes. This also includes student strikes and school walkouts. Not only was the original order not rescinded, but it was made more sweeping. I wrote suggesting that the policy on strike news be modified to permit broadcast of information on any strike so momentous, that it's likely to take the lead position in the newspapers the next morning. We'd look pretty silly in the eyes of people who see the stories splashed all over the papers the next day, but hear nothing about it on WLW. So how could this innocent question lead to such far-reaching ramifications? Two days later, I was called to the office of the business manager, and he says, I hate to tell you this, but the news department has been eliminated. And ridiculous as it may seem, I did not then attach my firing to that memorandum. Months later,

over dinner with a friend, Corwin talked about his sudden dismissal. I said to him, I agree, well, what would you do with the story? And he said, God, give it to the FCC, give it to your congressman, and give it to the ACLU. But for God's sake, don't sit on it, man, it's your civic duty to do something about it. The publication of the memo certainly didn't help WLW, and it's fight to retain its 500,000 watt power. Acromonious exchanges between Crosley and an openly hostile FCC commissioner only made the situation worse. Engineer Clyde Hayley picks up the story. Senator Wheeler from Montana was a prime mover in the Senate to kill the 500 kilowatt operation. And he got a resolution through the Senate that limited the power of broadcast stations to 50,000 watts. Since politicians and owners of smaller stations,

we're showing grave concerns about the economic impact of 500,000 watt WLW. The station began emphasizing the additional service its superpower provided to remote rural areas. However, this line of reasoning wasn't backed up by the sophisticated, nationally-oriented shows WLW had been developing since the late 20s. Realizing that his personal relationships with many top-country stars quickly bolstered the station's claims, WLW hired folk song expert John Lair as an independent producer in 1937. By October, Lair was well on his way with a variety of down-home shows, including Plantation Party, the Pine X Merrymakers, famous Renfro Valley Bandit. The wonderful Welcome to the

Old Renfro Valley Bandit. Come right on in. You're just in time to get in on the bus, also the boys and girls are here the rest of the coming in fast, so we're ready to start Big crowd here in the barn tonight. We might have to have you join us either in person or on the radio So stay right with us for a good time. Okay. So Well boys and girls look like everything's all set for a big night tonight and big crowd of fine folks that not there in front That was just waiting to be entertained for the weather cane southeast crowd another full house tonight The tune Creek girls coming up first got a little number for us. Paul get along home soon to get along do it, girl, oh Oh Oh

All yappi. My scenes and she'll live with impersonaries, he's so sweet. A l blank these're far from the other, man. In a home home, she think it's a home. Home... in a home home. I believe you're down. to the other. I feel like I am with my glove and the lift up home. April 8, 2012 by as hurry hours in a And I hope you're a favorite singer of old songs, Ramblin' Red Foley. Come on up, Red, and get started. I was born in pro-family, but I drifted for a way. I've been there to see the old songs,

and my friends of other days. All the friends I used to know, and I've been there to see the old songs, and I've been there to see the old songs,

and I've been there to see the old songs. Well, friends, when you run out of something to talk about, you can always talk about your neighbors. You know, when I first come to the city, I moved in one of these big A-partment houses, and, you know, the folks that lived across the hall from me, there was awful. You know, they had a beast Sue married to begin with. You know, she was always beefing, because he was always sued. You know, there's some sad, and there's some funny things, goes on in a big building like that. Now, right down the hall, for me, there's an old maid. And she was four to six years old, and never had a husband. And up on the third floor, there's a woman up there, 30 years old, and she's been married four times, and all of her husbands died, and she had them all cremated. Every time one died, she'd have them cremated. And one day, the day that a fourth husband was cremated, I met that four-hole maid,

and she was a crime like her heart would break. And she said, things ain't fair in this world to want as there are some others. She said, here I am, four to six years old, and they ain't never had a husband. There's that young woman up on the third floor. She's got them to birth. Well, sir, I'm going on to the wagon. These shoes are killing me. Well, Travis and his hot guitar. Oh, my God. Thank you. In less than a year, John Lair would control five different shows on WLW.

When the station belatedly realized it was missing out on the money to be made from big name country music, not just an advertiser dollars, but also from personal appearances, WLW established its own country music department. In a bold move, Crosley brought George Bigger over from Chicago's WLS. Since Bigger had been in charge of the famous national barn dance, his hiring placed him in direct competition with his one-time colleague John Lair. And like Lair, Bigger also relied upon friends from the national barn dance to bring star power to his staff. One of Bigger's first recruits was a 20-year-old who was built as the Canadian cowgirl. Today, Helen Dillard remembers the friendly competitiveness between performers from the two

camps. The rivalry was there, Lair was established, and we were the newcomers, and so we wanted to be better than the Lair show. With two sharp producers spearheading WLW's efforts, Cincinnati quickly gained prominence as one of the three great national setters of country music during the 30s and 40s. One of George Bigger's new shows would become a long-lived staple of both radio and early network television, when it was renamed Midwestern Heyron, but back in 1939, it was known by millions as the boom-pouty jambourd. Well, how did both of you want to know another big boom-couty jamboury, a big boom-pouty jamboury, a big boom-pouty, a big boom-pouty jamboury, a big boom-pouty jamboury

jamboury jamboury, a big boom-pouty jamboury. The world to go, and nothing to do, I'm just a happy lube and cowboy, let me ride the long trail down to the end, where the stars are always blue, here my song has a ride along with just a happy lube and cowboy, purging the dark clouds out of the sky, even the heaven moon, given the heaven moon

Get the call on Dolly Millie, the girls with the Golden West, and to show they are often a Golden West, they say, give me a straight suit and towel. You can have your city dyes with their kingdom fast, but give me a straight suit and towel. You can have your million hairs with their highs and pads, but give me a straight suit and towel. You can ride around and play the other more views. I would ride hard from western hills. You can have your college boys be naked or fast, but give me a straight

hand. You can have your college boys be naked or fast, but give me a straight suit and towel. You can have your college boys be naked or fast, but give me a straight suit and towel. Yes! Here's something I know you've all been waiting for, a song from our two of halop's wheat hearts, Luna Bell and Scottie. Since we reach large gold, I'd like to stroll back to the fore. And explore the days of yours by the little cabin door, since we're the way I long and pray for yesterday.

And the days that used to be more than all the world to me would like to go back to the dear old home. And take another look at the merry little brook that I used to roll. I'd like to say hello to my mother, don't you know? I'd like to live again as he used to live within that merry little home. Presenting the Delmore brothers and Zeke the Hayseed. This is the first number that ever was composed called the blues. It's a Memphis blues and they even saw the table to get charged fresh, won't we? Come on, baby!

Come on, baby! Background music playing, Well, that was the end of that one, don't you think we saw her gotten a hurry there, right? During the 1930s, radio shows were not only done, they were redone.

In order to accommodate the differences in time zones, a prime time program would do one broadcast for the eastern and central regions of the country. Three hours later, the cast, crew and orchestra would reassemble and perform the same show all over again for listeners in the West. However, one final element was needed, a live studio audience. Here is fun for you, the only hour show in radio, would you like to see the Pacific Coast re-broadcast of the big NBC variety show, Avalon Time, stayed here in the studios of the nation station at half past 12 tonight? Come and bring a party to your friends, who here and see this popular re-broadcast show late tonight. Take it to be available for you at the studios of station WLW. If you were one of the people taking advantage of that offer, those free tickets gave you a priceless early glimpse of a comedy legend. The only man and radio, who have ears like steam shovels, they pick up all the dirt, red skeleton.

I don't know why. Thank you very much and good evening ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, Del. Where do you get those corny interductions? Well, I don't know, Red, I guess it's the farmer in the Del. That's Del King folks, he's a little tired. Last night he put his mustache up in tin curlers and didn't sleep a wing. Boy, what a must say. Hey, girl. Well, you don't get arrested wearing that suit.

I am microphone. What do you mean? You think I'll get arrested wearing this suit? I am dressed to kill. Oh, Micah. Hey, have you been cryin' or did you wash your face? I've been swimming. Boy, was that water cold, but it didn't bother me, I went right in. I never did find out who pushed me. If I did a swan dive, it was so graceful, a two-seagull that asked me for my autograph. Well, the water was the cold that I finally had to come out. When the folks on my red hair, blue bathing suit, I mean, wait, I lost that up, didn't I? I finally had to come out. They're all good, so I can only find it. Next, I heard it. When I came out of the water and the folks on my red hair, white bathing suit and blue skin, they saluted me. I think it went just well out of went on, either. But I wasn't the only one in swimming. Edna's still well was there. She didn't exactly have on a bathing suit. She borrowed my handkerchief instead of prayer.

Bill Davis. Bill Davis. Oh, yeah. You know, half the quit, lady. We got another program coming all right. Oh, but we appreciate those left. Bill Davis was in swimming, and he had on a leopard skin bathing suit. He looked like a queen Mary and it's so wrong. He did a high dive and the water got a nasty letter from the flood control committee. Even when the scripts were less than inspired, Skeleton still managed to generate gales of laughter from his studio audiences that left listeners baffled. What was read up to? Well, see, he's doing all sorts of things, even doing prep falls and everything else. The cigarette girl on Avalon time, Mary Lou Lance. He was a visual comedian, and playing radio was just nothing. He had a plate to that audience, that studio audience. Well, one thing he did for me, to me, he said, I'm going to come over and cut you off from your, don't forget your change.

You never guess, but Avalon's got your left. He said, I'm going to cut you off. So that's exactly what he did. Ask for Avalon cigarette. And don't forget your change. And, oh, I guess I reacted to you. I was all excited. You upset and you're, of course, the program director. Was having a fit in the control room, because nobody knew what was going on. Anyway, Red was so happy with my reaction that he had to do to me. Although Red's comedy style was his own, the same could not be said about the voice Peter Grant used for the commercials on Avalon time. It was noticed by the director that certain quality of my voice reminded him of empty eyes. And so he asked me to play that up even more and ask that, you know, I even take it. Actually, just to make it as good an imitation you can possibly can. And I did.

And he would write the commercials or have the commercials written in such a way that the sound might be the beginning of a bar-side chat, first paragraph or something. And then go off into this commercial announcement for Avalon cigarette. He talked like Roosevelt. If you want a bargain, try the Avalon cigarettes and wait for your change. And the White House call-in says you've got to stop this announcement.