"Let's Pretend"

Harry Heuser's post about that much loved radio kid show really got my memory cells and hyperactive radio glands glands percolating. Harry was surprised that I wrote to the show asking for a piece of transitional music in one of the dramatized stories rather than something a child would be more interered in. That can send me off in a couple different directions. First off, I wasn't a small child, but probably a young teenager. Today's vintage radio program collectors categorize the shows in their databases. But back in radio's so-called golden age, radio listening was a family event. Mom and pop and the kids all heard the kid shows, soap operas, dramatic and musical shows.Crime shows, too, and I didn't become a serial killer. There might be the big console radio in the living room and maybe a small set in the kitchen. If you wanted big city entertainment in your home, you got it from radio. That's all there was. The family listened to it together. "Gathering around the family radio" is not a Norman Rockwell myth. It was really like that, incomprehensible as it might be to today's generation. It's probably impossible for anyone under age 70 or so to imagine the role that radio played in American family life in those days. My parents heard "Let's Pretend" with me and I listened to "Amos 'n Andy" along with them.
Ok. I popped off about that part of it. More personally speaking, I was probably born to be in radio, fascinated by the medium at an early age. When I won a grade school spellintg bee and got to tour WWJ and The Detroit News plant as a prize, the only question I asked at WWJ radio was "what's the difference between a record and a transcription?" I had to know how radio worked and why those golden voiced announcers told me "the following program is recorded and transcribed." Incidentally, as late as the 50's, when I got into the radio business, we still had to let the audience know that those musicians and actors were not really in the studio but they had been recorded. I even had to enter on the station log the time when I made that announcement. As a deejay, I would say "these records are just that" to make it legal. I doubt that anybody out there in radioland thought that Doris Day and the Les Brown Band were realy there with me, but the FCC was slow to change outdated rules. Now they have gone the other way. But that's a subject for another discourse, rant or whatever it turns out to be. So thanks, Harry. You ask good questions.

Whither Rod McKuen?

Is old Rod still around? I was holding a cat, reading Sara Teasdale and Rod's verse "Me and the Cat" popped into my head. He would be 3 or 4 years younger than I am, so I suppose he's still in business. Back in the 70's he was hailed as the all time most commercially successful poet. The envy of all the starving versifiers.

Tommy Dorsey ... Fallacious Forward

Trombonology's tribute to Tommy Dorsey, the bandleader who did everything right, reminds me of one of those heart-tugging e-mail forwards I got not long ago. Well meaning friends are always sending me things they think I need to know, whether for inspiration, patriotism, warning about some awful virus or who knows what. This one was presented a lot like one of Paul Harvey's "rest of the story" tales. The punchine was that Tommy Dorsey wrote the gospel song, "Take my hand Precious Lord" when his wife and daughter died. Thomas A. Dorsey did write it under those very circumstances. But he was an important, African American blues,jazz and gospel musician who worked with Mahalia Jackson among other stars. I wrote an article for our local senior paper about those legends and hoaxes that are partly true at best and most often totally false. But folks will go right on believing what they want to and the forwards keep piling into my mailbox. Oh, the junk we must wade through to find the good stuff the internet has to offer. Oh boy, I just had a dreadful thought. Do my blogs sometimes contribute to the cyberjunk that's piling up? Oh well, You know what they say. One man's junk is another man's treasure. Did anybody really say that or is that just another legend?

My Big P's

One of my several quirks is a tendency to compartmentalize things. Anything that shows up in this blog must be at least loosely related to media or pop culture, often with a definite tilt to things that stopped being popular a long time ago. Radio, TV, Newspaper, books, film, music, internet and such like. Other predilections, propensities, proclivities,preferences and passions are covered elsewhere, should anybody care. With something like 140 million blogs out there, I am not much concnerned about a big readership for this one or the others. I do it because it's fun.

Manatees, Apples and Yams

Only Jean Shepherd could leave me fascinated, intrigued, laughing out loud, running to the computer to find out all I can about Manatees. His tale of befriending one such sea creature in the Everglades, feeding it McIntosh Apples and Sweet Potatoes, is a rare treat for anyone who loves a good story. It's here.

The First Internet President

The Obama team's massive database had a big part in getting him elected. If I sign up, I can probably receive e-mail from the oval office. FDR had radio, JFK had TV. BHO has the world at his keyboard. He will have cyberspace and I expect that whoever follows him in that office will have outer space. What amazing times we live in. I'm just the slightest bit disappointed that I won't live to see that, but my ten year old grandson will.

The Funny Side of War

If I were a crusader type, filled with evangelical zeal and passion to teach the world something it needs to know, I might run around accosting strangers and asking, "Do you know about Jean Shepherd?" If one or two replied, "Sure, I still play some of them 78 rpm records of hers on my Victrola," I'd be in trouble. I would be forced to relive my days as Country Western deejay Cousin Clif in Flint, Michigan. That would not be good. But I digress again, leaving my readers, all two of them, with yet another Cliftonhanger.
Shepherd's claim to fame with the present generation is the 25 year old film, "A Christmas Story" about Ralphie, his air rifle and his old man's leg lamp. He was one of the past century's great writers/story tellers/raconteurs. Only Shep, who was elected to the radio hall of fame a few years ago, could do a laugh-out-loud funny 45 minute monologue about wartime humor. It's on Max Schmid's site. Get it while it's still there.
If my campaign to get Shep elected president of the universe fails, there's always my divine Sara Teasdale to go to bat for. Maybe I need to delete the "If I were" from my first line up there.

Art Bell and James Dobson?

Only in America. They were both inducted into the radio hall of fame last night. I listened to hear former inductee Orion Samuelson, one of the great farm broadcasters, eulogize WGN's Bob Collins. Uncle Bobby and several others who have gone to whatever awaits old broadcasters were inducted at the annual Chicago ceremony.

Playing With Words

Harry says I told a story that's a Cliftonhanger. That's funny. Playing with words is the most fun you can have without doing something illegal, immoral or fattening. On second thought, having too much fun with words can get you in trouble if directed at one who takes things literally and personally. I used to say what I thought were pretty innocent, brilliantly creative things to women, anticipating smiles of appreciation for my great cleverness and wit. What I got ranged from righteous frowns to disgusted glares. I don't do that anymore. The hypersensitive, painfully correct times we live in forced me to give up that kind of verbal recreation. Or maybe I just got too soon oldt und too late schmart.

Election Night Nerves

Although long retired from the broadcasting business, I still get seriously nervous at election time as I remember some major gaffes I committed while covering election returns on radio. You might ask, if I was and still am generally not interested in who is running for what office, why was I at election headquarters, microphone in hand, authoritatively reciting all kinds of names, numbers and percentages that meant nothing to me. If you were in small and medium market radio you had to do everything. I'll write more about that in another post one of these days.
I loved the three memorable years I spent at KOJM in Havre, Montana except at election time. (Say it "Haver" with a short "A.") It's not "Harve" and don't try to make it French like the seaport city it is named for. What a last frontier and land of opportunity. I would drive a hundred miles to tune a piano, emcee the Miss Havre Pageant on Saturday night and speak at three churches on Sunday Morning. One Sunday in Chinook, Montana,I rattled on in my great wisdom while those Montana Methodists left in mid-sermon to rescue their burning roasts. That green-eyed Norwegian girl who became Miss Havre was pretty cute. What was her name? That town's claim to fame was its annual national record low temperature. Anyway ... My first politcal faux pas brought only tolerant smiles when I played a political commercial and gave the guy's opponent credit for paying for it. Things got serious when I pushed the wrong button and put a political commercial on the air on election day. I was quickly informed that I had committed an illegal act of such magnitude that it might jeopardize my job and the station's license, if not the whole State of Montana. The boss literally made a federal case of it, drafting a letter to the Feds. It said I had been heavily scolded for my gross error and warned that any future such breach would find me no longer in the business. I don't remember if the candidate opposing the one whose spot I aired heard it and complained, or if the boss heard it and wanted to cover herself before the excrement hit the air circulator. Even as late as the 60's, which was when it happened, broadcasters were still scared to death of the Federal Communications Commission. They could yank your license if you broke the rules. Deregulation, automation and satellite broadcasting have pretty much ended that. Incidentally, the then program director at KOJM, Stan Stephens, later became governor of the great State of Montana. I made another election day broadcasting blunder or two after returning to Michigan. I have mercifully forgotten the details. I only remember the boss calling me to correct something dumb that I said. I probably announced that the incumbent mayor had been elected county Drain Commissioner or something equally crazy. I wonder if some election night party goers heard it and decided to give up drinking. Sports got me in trouble, too. But that's a tale to be told later, after I recover from these true confessions.
I must leave now. I'm starting to sweat just thinking about that dreadful election day in the Great Northwest.

Covering the coverage, then and now

The great demographers tell me that something under one percent of the world's 140 million bloggers were alive during FDR's first term. Should any young voters who put Obama in office happen to stumble upon my geriatric ramblings, they will probably think I have gone senile when I claim to be one of a great many Americans of the Roosevelt years who did not know that the president could not walk. The media, consisting of AM radio and the daily newspaper, kept the secret. If President Obama sneezes, the whole world will know about it.

Media Mania

You say you are relieved that the pre-election punditry is over? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Horsing around with Sara

Hold it! Do not fire off a comment telling me that if I want to stump for Ms. Palin I should learn how to spell her name. Get off your political high horse, dead horse, dark horse or candidate you are horsing around with. I do not talk or write about politics because I am shamefully dumb about the political and governmental process. It is ignorant , uniformed voters like me who put crooks and scoundrels in office. Jean Shepherd, that great radio philosopher, was right. If you don't know what you're doing, don't vote. As for what this post is about, I quote a past president who got in trouble for horsing around with the truth: Let me make this perfectly clear. I refer not to the Governor woman, her political candidacy, her appearances on late night TV or anything else about her. I speak of another, very different Sara who has no "H" on the end of her name. She did but she dropped it. Borrowing a line from yet another commader in chief, who horsed around in the oval office, I did not have sex with that woman. I couldn't because she died when I was three years old. My love for her is pure. The lady's name is Sara Teasdale. She wrote poems. One of them made me fall eternally in love with her when I discovered it thrity-five or more years ago. Maybe forty-five. It was a long time ago. I believe this lovely little verse says something simply beautiful and beautifully simple to all of us, even though Sara named it...





Advice to a Girl
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed;
Lay that on your heart,
My young angry dear;
This truth, this hard and precious stone,
Lay it on your hot cheek,
Let it hide your tear.
Hold it like a crystal
When you are alone
And gaze in the depths of the icy stone.
Long, look long and you will be blessed:
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed.


You can have your Emily Dickinson. Give me Sara. I have high hopes of meeting her in heaven. We will sit on a cloud and I will read her verses to her with my best radio voice. She will say Oh Cliffie, my words never sounded better."

Holy Hollywood Habits

Watching former movie star Mother Dolores Hart being interviewed on the Catholic channel, it came to me that there was another well known film star who caused quite a stir when she traded her Hollywood habits for a nun's habit. I can't pull the name out of my memory.
Seems like she might be deceased. Have I gone totally senile or did this really happen? Help!

Buster and the Barton

Harry Heuser, whose Broadcastellan is a beautifully written and researched journal dedicated to "keeping up with the out-of-date" asks me to share a bit about my experience accompanying Buster Keaton's silent films at the annual Keaton Society Convention that's held in my town every Fall. First off, I'm a second or third rate piano player with no organ training and little justification for ever playing a theater pipe organ in public. So why did I do it for three or four years back in the 90's? That's easy. It's all about a total fascination with the instrument. I was involved in the local group that has restored the 1929 Barton Pipe Organ in our downtown theater in several stages over many decades. Over on the right, that's organ technician extraordinaire Jim Fles, tearing the Mighty Barton limb from limb, wire from wire. Could he possibly know where all those wires go? Not only did he get it back together but he added lots of new sounds to the original eight ranks (sets) of pipes. Most fortunately, there are many such groups and gifted technicians around the country and the world, lovingly rebuilding the old organs that escaped the wrecking ball. And there's a surprising number of brilliant young organists who have fallen in love with the theatrical style, generally attributed to Jesse Crawford, that came and went away long before they were born. In the photo below is Jim on the left, showing off his reborn baby. On the right is the late Stan Stone, who spent a lifetime servicing pipe organs.
Dan Barton, whose firm installed their organs in many theaters here in Michigan and around the country, was a circus musician. He loved the brightly painted circus wagons and when he went into the pipe organ business, he wanted his instruments to be as much fun to look at as they were to listen to. The red and gold console like ours is called the circus wagon model.

I wanted to show off the organ as best I could, letting newer generations experience the silent films as their grandparents did, accompanied by an instrument that was designed for that very purpose.
Not blessed with the musicianship or technique to actually compose a score to go with the films as many of the professionals did, I just watched the picture and improvised noise to go with the action. I got away with it pretty well, playing bits of old songs that the various scenes brought to mind. When a pretty maid came into view I might use "A Pretty girl is Like a melody" or maybe "Pretty Baby." One of the films had some restaurant scenes so I played "Let's have another cup of coffee, let's have another cup of tea" and "A cup of coffee, a sandwich and you." For the Keaton film, "The Cameraman," I composed sort of a poor man's score, weaving "You oughta be in pictures" into the accompaniment. For a scene where Buster was singing the old "Prisoner's Song ...If I had the wings of an angel," I played right along with him as he mouthed the words. I always wondered if there were any old timers in the audience who recognized those old tunes. When the villain appeared, I just played some scary minor chords and progressions down at the low end of the keyboard. Harry Heuser's high class journal, too good to be just a blog, and my middle class organ playing do have a thing or two in common. They are entertaining and they come from love.
Whatever my playing lacked, it was entertaining, and that's what the theater organ is for. It does not edify as in a church or concert hall. It weeps and wails for pathos, makes outrageously cute and funny sounds for comedy. It has horns and sirens, bells, whistles, xylophones, drums, all kinds of sound effects, all played from the massive console. The British fellow who invented the theater organ called it a unit orchestra ... a whole orchestra in one unit, playable with the fingers and feet of one very busy organist. I didn't get paid for the three or four years I made all that more or less musical noise, maybe because I let it slip that I would probably pay them just to be able to sit at the huge console. It looks like the cockpit of a jet plane, surrounded by three keyboards and countless knobs, buttons, levers, switches, things to push, pull and flip. And down below there's a keyboard to play with my feet for the low, low notes, plus some more big buttons, called pistons, down there to turn on some of the sound effects. The theater pipe organ might be the most complex, demanding musical instrument ever built. To play it well, you would need extensive, concert level training plus an understanding of registration. That's organ language for knowing what to do wih all those gadgets to coax the various sounds out of all the hundreds of pipes and assorted noise makers at your command. If you have the opportunity to watch a good professional theater organist's hands, as you can find on some you tubes, you will see him constantly pushing buttons and flipping tablets, changing the sound with almost every measure, jumping to one of the other keyboards for a few notes or a sound effect, playing on one keyboard while setting up sounds on another one. It is a demanding mental and physical exercise that is fascinating to watch. Any good keyboard artist can play the notes, but only a real theater organist can make the instrument sound like a whole orchestra and more. At the console for this year's Keaton convention was Chicago organist, Dennis Scott. He is president of the Chicagoland Theatre Organ Society and the Silent Film Society of Chicago. Of the big name organists who have played our Barton, I found Gaylord Carter, who played the "Amos 'n Andy" theme music on radio, to be the most entertaining. For beauty of registration, getting gorgeous sounds out of the then small instrument, my vote goes to Lee Irwin. He was one of the radio organists on WLW's legendary "Moon River" program.

Because they are so complex, pipe organs are notoriously temperamental. Pipes refuse to play while others might sound off all by themselves with no keys being pressed. When that happens, a good organist just plays around the offending squawker, playing notes that fit pretty well with it, until someone runs up to the pipe room and fixes it. One of my more memorable moments happened when the blower that supplies the air to the pipes died. No air, no sound. A woman from the audience wrote in her small town newspaper, "The show was very entertaining until Mr. Martin's organ lost its air." There's no business like show business.

Elvis's co-star now a nun

Former movie star Dolores Hart, who played opposite Elvis in 3 films, now a Reverend Mother, Prioress of an abbey, will be interviewed by Father Groeschel Sunday night Oct. 26 on the EWTN Catholic network. Should be most interesting. If you miss it, they repeat it on the following Saturday. I will probably have something to say about it on my "religious" blog, Goofy Church Stuff.
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Buster Keaton Lives

The Damfinos, the International Buster Keaton Society, came to my town again this fall for their annual convention. The Keaton family had a lakefront Summer home in an actors colony here in the 1920's. Here I am with Eleanor Keaton, Buster's widow on the left and Adrian Booth, his co-star in one of the classic Keaton silent films that I accompanied on the Barton Theater Pipe Organ on the right. The photos were taken in the mid 90's.



Eleanor was much younger than Buster, but they had 26 good and loving years together. Buster died in 1966 and Eleanor was with us until 1998. At my last report, Adrian Booth was still alive at 90.




Photos courtesy of dear friend, show business afficiando and friend of the stars Al Flogge

TWO BEAUTIFUL GIRLS

50'S pin-up girl Bettie Page in her famous Nurse Bettie pose, painted for me from a wall hanging that's over the Hammond Organ, by my very talented sister-in-law, Peggy Shumate. The other beautiful girl is Willie, still sleepy after a cat nap on her Hammond Organ. She owns the antique Zenith Radio, too. I will get a shot of her claiming it.

There's Something About a Hammond

Thanks to the grand and very special friend who has learned the joy of giving, my office/den/ antique gallery/Bettie Page Shrine now sports a Hammond Organ as well as the Antique Zenith radio over which I am seen peering geriatrically in the profile. Those 60 year old Hammonds are still treasured today,whether playing a corny skating rink tune, rockin' gospel, cool jazz or screaming rock. They do it all. No, mine's not a legendary B-3. Paired with a Leslie Speaker, a nice Hammond B-3 can bring up to $10,000 these days. Mine is an M-3. I saw one like it in the thrift store for sixty bucks. It's the first Hammond tone wheel model to be put in a spinet cabinet for those who did not have the cash or the room for one of the big boys. I only play schmaltzy theatrical style but I guess my M-3 could rock pretty good if I knew how to do it. Lots of rock groups use it. Right over the console there's a big wall hanging of Nurse Bettie,as well as the painting you see in the previous post,and a big poster in her undies. And there's a 1930 Packard that hangs over the '41 Zenith radio. We old boys must have our toys. I wrote about that on one of my other blogs, appropriately named Farting Around

Perfect Pitch Puzzle

Charlotte Harris, only female member of Lawrence Welk's TV orchestra, was interviewed at the close of last night's old Welk show on PBS TV. She said her entire family of six all had perfect pitch. I think she referred to herself, three siblings and both parents. How rare is that? Has it happened before? Has anyone done a family study about it? There is a fellow who advertises in the musician's magazine and on the net, claiming he can teach us to develop perfect pitch. Most scientists who are into psycho acoustics say you're either born with it or you're not. Does anybody really understand the phenomenon?