Vote for Gracie and the Surprise Party

The greatest presidential campaign was 1940.  George Burns's beloved Gracie tossed her hat in the ring with real style.

Radio's Big Voice

I imported this one from my Facebook Page

I listened to The Lone Ranger, The Challenge of the Yukon and Super Man last night. I continue to be amazed at how real those old radio shows were. Truly "theater of the mind." Another interesting thing. Male radio heroes had deep voices. Clark Kent went into the phone both , emerged as Superman and his voice dropped an octave . The rock culture and its falsetto singers changed all that. A deep voice now sounds like somebody's grandfather. I couldn't get used to the light voices of the movie actors who played Superman. They sounded like Clark Kent when he went into the phone booth to become Superman with super powers and a super voice. It just wasn't right. Another old time radio show, one of the best ever produced and also great onTV, was Gunsmoke. I never watched the TV version. William Conrad had the perfect Dodge City sheriff radio voice but he was too fat for TV. It was the longest running Western series.. I am so glad that I grew up with that kind of radio that let me draw my own mental pictures of what the characters looked like.

NEW TIME RADIO

Podcasts are the New Radio.  You see the "R" word used a lot in that way.  It's audio, that's for sure.  But it's not much like what has become  Old Time Radio.  There's lots of the old classic shows for younger persons who want to experience what their grandparents listened to or perhaps study it as history.  But it's difficult  to find a podcast or new radio drama that sounds like the "real thing," even those that are billed as produced in OTR style.  The acting on contemporary audio theater is often pretty bad.

Podcast producers are so enamored with amazing digital special effects technology that they sometimes appear more interested in showing off their stuff with music and tightly edited clips than in communicating ideas or telling a story. Way back in the day, all you had to work with was a microphone, a live sound effects person and a Hammond organ for musical punctuation.  Corny by today's standards but played by an expert, the Hammond was the perfect instrument for that purpose. Many early radio organists were true artists, having learned their craft accompanying silent films.

Alright, so I'm an old fart who grew up when radio was the biggest home entertainment and information medium.  Thank you kindly for letting me pop off.

MICHAEL AND ME

The Michael in the title is Michael Moore. OK, so I don't know him and all we share is a Flint, Michigan

connection.  Pretty important for both of us.  It can't hurt to toss out the name of somebody famous. Michael got famous for "Roger and Me, " his film about General Motors' part in the near death of that once great city.
I got famous in Flint ... alright maybe not that famous... as a hotshot deejay in Flint Radio. That was 1950.  Was I cute, or what? Another famous Flint name is William "Billy" Durant.  He founded General Motors in 1908. There was a Durant Hotel.  I don't know if it's still there.  And a Durant auto, too.

Flint was still a big prosperous GM town when I was there. That's where  I met my wife, a radio fan and our first child was born there. Relatives and in-laws worked at the auto plants. I would not have met my wife but for the great migration of Southerners who came North for good factory jobs. 
I'm not a great fiction reader but I'm glad my wife was a John Grisham fan. I took a look at her copy of his 2001 novel, "A Painted House." It was a tale of an Arkansas family and their trek to Flint for work. My wife was born in Newport, Arkansas and they moved to the Flint area when she was three years old. When somebody mentions John Grisham I always ask if they read that one.

My wife, young son and I left Flint in 1954, the year that Michael Moore was born, in my big beautiful  white 1951 Dynaflow Special just like this one. Actually, the "Special" was the low end Buick model.  But I felt like I was driving a Roadmaster when that Dynaflow transmission wound up and she started to move. We  listened to Gisele MacKenzie sing "My Buick, my love and I," the theme song of "Uncle Miltie" Milton Berle's TV show.  Chevrolets went by,  families hearing  Dinah Shore's theme music, "See the USA in your Chevrolet." It was still a good time for Flint and General Motors and it got even better into the 60s.  One of the several radio jobs that I left, not exactly voluntarily, was at WTAC.  That stood for "The Auto City." A sign at the North end welcomed all to "Buick Town." A few years ago a long mothballed arch was dug out and re-erected over Saginaw Street. It originally proclaimed Flint "TheVehicle City."

By the time native son Michael Moore grew up, his town had fallen on terrible times. GM closed most local plants and moved to Mexico. Moore's documentary, "Roger and me" showed him demanding to see GM CEO Roger Smith to give him an earful about what he had done to Flint. Someone painted the sign when Flint was named one of the country's five most dangerous cities. 

What got my nostalgia juices flowing about all this history is a 1923 Durant that showed up in the Muskegon shop of friend Phil Schugars, a professional restorer of classic and antique cars. It's  owned by Ken Brink, a member of the Durant owners club.  His e-mail address even makes reference to the Durant name.  

Durant's company built other cars  including the Flint. Here's a classy 1925 Flint Touring Car.  Wouldn't it  have been the cat's meow to take your  best girl for a ride in this baby! Or the whole family. 

The first words I spoke into a radio microphone were "Going Forward With Flint." It hasn't worked out well for Flint or the Buick. She wasn't even 10 years old when the junkyard gave me twelve bucks for her.  Oh well, I have great memories.   I won't forget the town where my son and my Buick were born.

BOGEY and BACALL on Radio

BOLD VENTURE was a great radio series.  What a pair .... as good together on radio as on the screen.

Turn on the bubble machine

Come every Saturday Night I am about to bust out of my geriatric skin from needing to express high praise for those old Lawrence Welk shows.  Laugh at them if you will, and I know you will, but the fellow with the funny accent hired world class performers for his musical family. I am awed at the talent, training, musicianship and showmanship in those shows.  OK, so it's corny and hokey by today's showbiz standards.  What's new ain't always better.

STRANGE FRUIT

That song, first recorded by Billie Holiday, might be the first social commentary protest song.  Most unusual for 1939 when Ella Fitzgerald did her jazzy version of "a-tisket a-tasket, the old nursery rhyme. Today's generation and probably at least one before it grew up with "message" songs about some social issue.  No so for me.  Songs were for fun and romance. "Strange Fruit" is  about a lynching. The word doesn't appear but but the meaning is there.

RANDOM HARVEST

Random Harvest.  A sweet amnesia story.  Maybe a bit predictable but who cares.  I watched it because TCM host guy  Robert Osborne and guest programmer Gene Wilder said it had two great speaking voices, Ronald Coleman and Greer Garson.  It wouldn't be real hard to work up a tear over the Smithy and Paula tale.  Wilder said it does it for him. Too bad I could not stay up for the next TCM oldie, "The Merry Widow" from 1934.

DORIS DAY IS 90

Another Doris Day film I must see again. "The Glass bottom boat." Arthur Godfrey was her father. Like many broadcasters of my era, I was a huge Godfrey fan and admirer. Once a powerful radio and TV performer, so popular that he could have been elected to high political office if he had chosen to go that way, he became a victim of cultural and media change when folksiness no longer worked.

NIGHT VALE

Have I yet popped off about the quirky town  of Night Vale and its community radio station? At my age, who can remember what got me sufficiently excited to write about it.  But oh there is excitement of a strange, peculiar and weird kind in that town.  It ain't Lake Wobegon, Minnesota.  Nobody, including the people who live there, whether above or under the streets, knows just where it is.  Or if it is.  Attempting to describe  it is pointless.  You must experience Night Vale in a way that only a podcast can do for you.  You will love it  or scratch your head and mumble "What IS this?  Night Vale is for persons of some perspicacity.  Are you perspicacious  enough?  Did I spell that right?

 Just enter "Night Vale.  You will be taken there.  Oh, one more thing.  You might not return.

NANCY LAMOTT

I guess I should start a blog or sub-blog called "How could I not know."  How could I not know about Nancy Lamott.  I discovered her on Jonathan Schwartz's wonderful Great American Songbook channel on WNYC on the internet. Nancy, from Midland in my home state of Michigan, was called the greatest cabaret singer since Sinatra.  I can't listen to her recordings and think of her story without getting goosebumps, chills, a tear or two and all kinds of strange feelings. She had terrible health problems,  had  an ostomy, continued to sing through it all, was told she needed a hysterectomy.  Put it off, died from cancer at 43.  From her deathbed she asked her boyfriend to marry her.  A priest performed the wedding 45 minutes before she died. That was ten years ago.  She is still revered by many.  Jonathan Schwartz ends his shows with one of her songs.  How could I not know.

MARS IS HEAVEN

I listened to Ray Bradbury's old tale, "Mars is Heaven" on an episode of radio's "Escape" series.  Reminds me of the current books by people who say they went there (heaven) and came back to write about it.   According to news stories, it might not be terribly long before we will be shelling out big bucks to visit the red planet and find out for ourselves.
"Escape" especially interests me as one of the very few old radio dramas that has the music played on a pipe organ.  Being a Hammond Freak, in my head I hear organist Ivan Ditmars playing the same great dramatic stuff on a Hammond and it seems more satisfying.  You can say the Hammond was invented for corn and schmaltz, gospel or jazz.  But it also did a magnificent job of musically punctuating radio drama.  There's nothing quite like it.

Old radio well preserved

I keep getting surprised at the number of shows from radio's golden age that are available for listening today, considering the primitive recording methods they had at that time.  Shows were recorded on big, 16 inch platters called electrical transcriptions.  They could be worn, damaged or just destroyed because  they took up a lot of storage space. I find a new internet site almost daily that offers hundreds of  old radio shows, cleaned up and sounding like new. You can buy whole collections on CDs but there are so many free ones that I feel no need to buy anything. What a treasure from the days when radio was the major home entertainment medium.

TELL ME A STORY, SHEP

 Buzzfeed has produced a video of clips from Jean Shepherd's "A Christmas Story" with some digitally added things. I am totally surprised at the comments from the many who have not seen the film and who probably never heard of Shep, one of the very great storytellers of the past century. His stories began on radio, then books and in films, including this Christmas Classic.

 One of the splendid things about being quite terribly old is knowing about stuff like this.

Funny thing about old time radio

I know in my head that those old time radio dramas were done by actors standing at a microphone and a sound effects guy shooting guns, making horse noises and all sort of things.  But I get lost in the story a lot more than I do with TV.  Radio drama somehow become real.  You see the action and the people in your mind.  That's why OTR is called "Theater of the mind."  There could be no better description.  How sad that radio no longer does that except for a few groups and individuals who  understand that great medium and devote themselves to promoting, sharing and producing radio drama.

Old songs Old man

 

I awake most mornings with a song in my head. An old song because I don't know any new ones. Today it's "Shakin' the Blues Away." I didn't say "with a song in my heart." That belongs to Jane Froman. What's that, you never heard of her? You are too young. No. I am too old. What am I doing here. I quit. Again.

Canadian Capers

Oh boy, I am going nuts with memories of crossing the Bluewater Bridge from Port Huron, Michigan to Sarnia, Ontario or going through the tunnel under the Detroit River to get to Windsor.  And how about the short ferry ride across the St. Clair River from Marine City, Michigan to Sombra, Ontario.  I wonder what is causing all this.  I know, I saw some beautiful Canadian Grown sunflowers at the store.  While I am in the mood,. you must watch this funny video by a famous Canadian   that we all know.  But I bet we didn't know he's from the land North, East or South of Michigan.  Yes, you go South from Detroit to Windsor.  Check the map. While you are listening, I think I will consume a jug of Canola Oil to see just how Canadian I can get.

Canuck Radio

If I get two more cats, which would being the total to five felines, I would name them Quirk and Quark. Nope, not after the nasty little guy on Star Trek.  It would be for the Canadian Radio show all about science, "Quirks and Quarks."  It's something like public radio's "Science Friday."  I used to hear it on shortwave and now it's on the internet. I have long had a thing for Canadian Radio.  I grew up with the Happy Gang a hundred years ago. You couldn't say "beer" on the CBC.  When the gang played it, it was the barrel polka.  I still follow all the old shows and some new ones on the 'net.  Bobby Gimby's Canadian Centennial song is an earworm that I can't get out of my head.  I must learn to sing it in French. It might take some time to load. If you can listen only once and stop and you don't dance around wishing you had some Canadian in you, you're a better man than I am.

R.I.P. Helen Thomas

Helen Thomas has left us.  Great lady, feisty old broad. It was Bob Garfield's "On The Media" comment about her that inspired one of the former names of  another of my too many blogs.  "Geriatric obstreperousness."  It's too hard to spell.  The blog is now Paul's Peculiar Pronouncements

Marvelous Musical Michael Feinstein

Young Michael Feinstein is the greatest thing that has happened to the songs of "The Great American Songbook," the songs America loved before the mid 50s when the rock culture and its music came along and forever changed the world.  He's a passionate preservationist, dedicating his  considerable talent to keeping those songs alive.  If you don't know about him, look him up.  Gives me goosebumps and smiles.