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Many St. Louisans remember the classic battle between WIL and KXOK to dominate the market’s young listening audience in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, but the city’s first deejay war took place a decade earlier.

In the late ‘40s, the concept of a disc jockey was just beginning to take hold. Radio stations which were network affiliates relied on the nets to fill the day with programming, which ranged from news to soap operas to comedies, dramas and kids’ shows. A new invention – television – was slowly making inroads, and the networks were beginning to raid their stables of radio stars to provide programming for the new medium.

Independent radio stations provided many of the same types of shows as did their net-affiliated brethren, but the shows were locally produced. Those programs that relied on “transcribed music” were completely scripted, and the announcers seldom projected any of their own personalities.

But in 1947, St. Louisans got their first taste of disc jockey competition. The situation is described in Arnold Passman’s book, “The Deejays.” Two men who had already established themselves in the market suddenly became competitors for the ears of the music-loving masses.

Rush Hughes had made a name for himself nationally as announcer/host for the NBC game show “Pot O’ Gold,” and in news, delivering commentaries even before he came to St. Louis. This had led to a syndication deal in which his commentaries were distributed to subscribing stations on disc.

Gil Newsome also had done national work as the announcer on “Coca-Cola’s Victory Parade of Spotlight Bands,” heard on the Blue Network and Mutual. In St. Louis, he took his show to where the teen audience was, doing remotes and personal appearances constantly.

As Passman described it in his book, Hughes was working at KXOK in the spring of 1947. “By late spring KWK had brought in the rapid-fire, hard-selling Newsome, with his record shop surveys. And it wasn’t long after the fall semester was underway that he topped the ratings.”

Besides his work as a local deejay, Hughes had some additional responsibilities. He was on the road frequently promoting his syndicated show, but he managed to corner celebrities while he was traveling and return with interviews he could broadcast on KXOK. Newsome soon went on the road on weekends to do the same thing.
The two would also battle using record promoters, jockeying to be the first in the market to air a new release. When successful, each jock would make sure his listeners knew he had bested the competitor at the other station. Passman wrote, “Nowhere was the battle more frenzied than in St. Louis.”

To the casual observer, all this competition would seem to be beneficial to listeners. The city’s top two radio personalities working so hard to be best would certainly result in a better radio product. It did, but there was an interesting bit of fallout.

Passman notes that other deejays at lesser stations here were left in the dust, but they were smart enough to know their limits “…lesser announcers would reluctantly turn down advance men for entertainers. Not only did they acknowledge the power of a Hughes or a Newsome…they feared their possible air venom. By letting the press agents off the hook in this way, the other deejays shrugged their shoulders and tried to make the best of a sticky situation.”

This opening salvo in St. Louis’ deejay wars came to an end in 1948 when Hughes took a job in Chicago, but it wasn’t peaceful for long. A young jock named Ed Bonner soon hit town on KXOK, giving Newsome another foe to battle over the airwaves.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 4/2008.)

Freezing temperatures at the end of December in St. Louis are to be expected. But even though the mercury dropped to 33 degrees the night of Christmas Eve, 1925, a group of engineers apparently had no qualms about trekking to the middle of a field in the (then) far-western suburb of Kirkwood for a special nighttime event.

That was the night KMOX, St. Louis’ “super station” signed on. The inaugural broadcast, which began at 7:00 p.m. and lasted well past midnight, focused the spotlight on those who had worked to make the station a reality, and it meant an unusually large contingent of engineers was stationed at the station’s transmitter building north of Manchester Road near Geyer.

Telephone engineer Ray Elmore recalled just how rural the setting was at the transmitter site: “At the time the location of the two original towers on Geyer Road north of Manchester was a big cow pasture grown up in weeds and brush and there were no circuits out there. It’ll be hard for people who live there now to realize just what I’m talking about. Kirkwood didn’t extend beyond Manchester Road north at all…They had us standing by in case there was trouble on the circuits. And we were standing outside of this little building they had there out in that cow pasture on Christmas Eve.”

The “little building” to which Elmore referred was actually an 11-room stucco structure that housed the huge transmitting equipment for the station. In an on-air interview at KMOX in the ‘70s he remembered a windy night, but he also remembered a sense that the crew of engineers at the transmitter was part of something very special.

For KMOX ownership and management, that inaugural broadcast had to be noteworthy. Three nights of dress rehearsals were scheduled at the studios in the Mayfair Hotel. Station music director Elizabeth Cuney was in charge of coordinating several large ensembles which were appearing on the program, including the Little Symphony, the vested choir of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church and Gene Rodermich’s Jazz Orchestra. It was even more of a challenge because of the limited floor space available – the station had only two studios at the time, and there was a large assemblage of dignitaries who were all planning to speak over the air as well.

Engineering studies showed that the station would achieve maximum geographical coverage by broadcasting the event at night, and radio fans across the nation were alerted in advance. An article in the Christian Science Monitor dubbed the coming Christmas Eve broadcast a Christmas gift to the nation. “’The Voice of St. Louis’ as it already is known due to the fact that it has been heralded throughout the country by the big civic and industrial enterprises in represents, will perform a territorial service in the main and a national service incidentally in making millions better acquainted with St. Louis and the greater southwest trade territory of which St. Louis is logically the gateway.”

Who better to extol the virtues of St. Louis than Mayor Victor Miller? He began to speakers’ portion of the broadcast describing KMOX as “our candle on a candlestick through which we shall reach the farther-most corners of this great country of ours and advise them of our ambition, our achievements, and our desire for service.”

The speakers droned on, with representatives from each corporate member of the “Voice of St. Louis, Inc.” being given mike time. At 10:15, KMOX relinquished the airwaves for 15 minutes to a St. Louis station that had had already been on the air for two years. KFUO, which shared a frequency with KSD and which was owned by the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, used its allotted time to begin the religiously oriented portion of the KMOX show. This led to Christmas carols by the St. Peter’s choir and then a broadcast of a full Communion service, which led to the stroke of midnight.

Christmas Day 1925 officially dawned on KMOX with the music of the Gene Rodermich Jazz Orchestra. This was followed with more sharing of time with existing stations, WIL and WSBF.

Of all the civic and corporate leaders who addressed the vast, unseen audience over KMOX that night, the man who represented one of the city’s newspapers seemed to have the best grasp of the potential of this radio station. The Globe-Democrat was one of the Voice of St. Louis shareholders. President and editor E. Lansing Ray said of the station, “…we hope to reflect the advantages of a great city and its market – the commercial, industrial, the civic and the cultural assets of St. Louis…Think, then, of the Voice of St. Louis as a community gift.”

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 1/08)

In the days when there were creative, talented people in the radio business, there were plenty of “characters” who gravitated to broadcasting. Kitty Fink, as she was known to her listeners, fit that description, even after she got out of the broadcast business.

The daughter of a St. Louis jeweler, she graduated from Soldan High School in 1927 and was a child prodigy of sorts. She had played piano with the St. Louis Symphony when she was 16.

During her college years at Washington University she is reported to have made her St. Louis radio debut, singing in a symphony broadcast on KWK. But Kitty apparently wanted more.

The national publication Radio Stars reported that she snagged a year-long singing contract on KMOX, but her unorthodox method of applying for the job provided insight into her future behavior. According to the article, “She didn’t apply for an audition the regular way, approaching humbly, the way any girl who wanted to get started in a new field would. She just walked up to the secretary of George Junkin, director of the station, and said in her haughtiest manner, ‘You’d better tell Mr. Junkin Miss Thompson is here, and I haven’t much time to give him.’

“Mr. Junkin, amazed, consented to see her. She was ushered in. ‘Oh, hello George Junkin,’ she said brightly.

“Flabbergasted, Mr. Junkin stared at her. ‘Heaven knows who she is,’ he thought. ‘She must have slipped my memory. She seems to know who I am.’ The she explained what she wanted.

“’So you think you can sing,’ Mr. Junkin said weakly.

“’I know I can sing.’” It was this spunk that would bring her much success and also get her into trouble. When Junkin hired her for $25 a week, she told him it wasn’t enough.

“’Keep still or I’ll make it $20,’ he countered.

“’Go ahead,’ said Miss Thompson, as sassy and fresh as they come. ‘I’ll be making more than you will some day.’”

A year later Kitty Fink was fired because she showed up late for a sponsored broadcast. Radio Stars reported, “At a party, 40 miles from the station KMOX in St. Louis, she was having the time of her young life when her escort, Jimmie, tapped her on the arm and reminded her that she was supposed to be on the air in 10 minutes.”

Kay later related “We made 40 miles in 30 minutes doing 80 miles an hour. Sure we got there late, but the broadcast was still on.”

But she’d forgotten her sheet music, so she wrote a note to orchestra leader Michael Charles: “Play ‘Some of These Days’ in G minor.” The band faked its way though, but her performance was, at best, sub par, and the sponsor, who had been listening, demanded that she be fired. Later, she recalled “I was young and foolish. I felt the sponsors were thick as fish. We just went back to the party and had a swell time.”

Movie and television director Sam Irvin is compiling a biography of Kitty/Kay. He says she went to the West Coast in the summer of 1933, but soon returned to St. Louis, taking a job as a singer with Al Lyons’ band, which was often heard in live radio broadcasts from the Coronado Hotel. Within months she received a telegram offering her a job as a staff singer at KHJ, the CBS station in Los Angeles. Less than a year after that she was singing on the Bing Crosby Woodbury Soap show.

But the story doesn’t end there. After numerous network appearances with the bands of Fred Waring and Andre Kostelanetz and a job as a regular cast member on “Your Hit Parade,” Kitty, now known as Kay Thompson, began several new, highly successful careers. She appeared in movies, hosted her own nightclub act, and is also cherished by generations of young female readers of the Eloise book series, which Kay Thompson authored.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 08/07)

Writers were the faceless – usually nameless – people behind the scenes in yesteryear radio. Without them very little would have happened. A St. Louis man made a national name for himself in the field of radio writing after he grew tired of the long hours he was putting in at his old job.

Phil Leslie told interviewer Chuck Schaden he had been working as an assistant manager and bookkeeper in a St. Louis theater in the late 1930s when he decided to trade in his 80-hour work week for a job in writing. In 1939 he submitted some jokes to radio comedian Al Pearce for use on his network program, The Al Pearce Show. Broadcast nationally on NBC, the 30-minute show was sponsored by Grape Nuts.

Pearce was impressed, and he not only offered a writing job to Leslie. He even paid for the family’s move to Hollywood. But shortly after the Leslie family settled in California, the program went off the air for its summer hiatus, forcing Leslie to scrounge for another line of work and develop some free-lance writing work on the side.

He landed at Lockheed Aircraft, which brought in some income for a couple years. Then it was hand-to-mouth during the early years of the war. He eventually picked up script writing duties for the Major Hoople show and Victor Borge’s Kraft Music Hall. But when Phil Leslie got a chance to feed some material to a man named Don Quinn, he found the perfect job.

In March of 1943, Quinn was writing for the hugely popular Fibber McGee and Molly show. Leslie was able, through mutual friends, to get some of his material to Quinn and the two hit it off. Leslie’s work on Fibber McGee and Molly lasted until the mid-50s. He told interviewer Schaden that he began by coming up with loose plotlines so the door-knocking regular characters’ appearances could be woven into the show. Within a few months, Leslie was writing entire programs.

Quoted in the book “Heavenly Days,” Leslie said, “Don Quinn hired me to write with him, and it was a big change in my whole life…To have had thirteen years of that kind of life with Marian and Jim [Jordan, who played the show’s leads], and the others, it was a joy!”

Writing a once-a-week radio program was a week-long process. Leslie told interviewer Schaden, “…my routine was that I would write the whole show, and we would get together at the Jordans’ house on Saturday afternoon. We would all read the script – read it aloud…and I would sit and sweat – wondering how good it was. Then Don would rewrite it over the weekend on Saturday night and Sunday, as much as he thought it needed…Then Monday we’d do a reading, and Don would make cuts and polishes. Tuesday we’d rehearse all day and do the show.”

Apparently Don Quinn’s long relationship with the Jordans had yielded more than a personal relationship. They trusted his judgment completely, whether it was in hiring the best writers or in making the final script edits before the live Tuesday night broadcasts. The Fibber McGee and Molly show consistently placed in the top five nationally in number of listeners.

Along with that popularity, the show had an uncanny influence on the public as the source of favorite sayings that made their way into everyday use: “That ain’t the way I heeerd it;” “You’re a haaaard man, McGee;” “Looove dat man;” “Tain’t funny, McGee;” and “Heavenly days!” The Fibber McGee and Molly show was literally a “destination program” for radio listeners, giving them something to talk about the next day with their friends.

When Don Quinn left the program, Phil Leslie was promoted to his position. Shortly afterward the network changed the program from a half-hour, once-a-week broadcast to a fifteen minute show five nights a week.

By 1953, the power of network radio had begun to slip. Phil Leslie began writing for television, which he continued until his retirement.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 06/2007.)

In 1956, Jim Hummel was a curious high school senior, and an invitation from one of his teachers led to a lifelong radio career that ended 51 years later.

As a senior at Christian Brothers College High School in St. Louis, Hummel was doing well. He was a captain in the military school, an accomplishment that made his mother proud. His English teacher, Roy McCarthy, was moonlighting weekends under the air name of “Byron Scott” across the river at a small East St. Louis radio station, WTMV, and one day while the two were talking about McCarthy’s outside work, he invited the young man to come to the studios the following Saturday to visit.

Radio in the 1950s was making a transition from its glory days when networks provided the bulk of the programming. Now that television was becoming a more dominant medium, radio was remaking itself into a companion. In the case of WTMV, there was block programming, which meant that the type of program might change each couple of hours.

McCarthy was a good host that Saturday, showing Hummel what went on in a small station’s control room, but a problem arose for the announcer. The newsman called in and said he wouldn’t be able to make it for his shift. For the young Hummel it was kismet. McCarthy drafted the student to read a news broadcast, telling him he had 20 minutes to check the wire copy and assemble his script. Hummel later told Miami Herald reporter Kevin Baxter, “I didn’t blow a word – not a single word.”

The student’s on-air debut was followed by a phone call from the station manager asking who was reading the news. Hummel was hired immediately, and the station paid him $1.00 an hour to drive across the river after school to read the news.

“Just riding home that afternoon,” he told the reporter, “thinking about what had just happened. I was on the radio!
“People all over East St. Louis could flip on a little switch and hear me talking to them. I thought, ‘This is what I’m going to do. Somehow. Some way. I’m going to do radio as a career.’”

WTMV’s block programming included shows by a couple disc jockeys. Robert BQ played rhythm and blues each night. Bob Farrell, Roscoe McCrary and Les Barry also had daily shows. For the most part, the jocks got to choose the music they played with a little help from program director Dan Stengel, and there were always requests from listeners.

Within a few months of his hiring, Hummel was given his own program after Farrell was fired. He worked seven days a week on his program and filled in wherever he was needed.
The WTMV studios on the mezzanine of the Broadview Hotel weren’t lavish, but to a 17-year-old, they represented the first step into a lifetime of radio. “Rock was just beginning,” says Hummel. “The bigger stations like KXOK and WIL were playing the hits.

“I would play all kinds of music, because we weren’t limited to a format. But this was just a small 250-watt station. My mom even had trouble picking it up at our home in north St. Louis.”

Somehow, some way, the young man did end up making radio his career. He left East St. Louis in 1959, and as he moved up in the radio business through Omaha and Denver, settling in Miami, Hummel’s air name became Rick Shaw. In South Florida, he became a radio legend, retiring in 2007 after working in the Miami market for over 45 years.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 4/2007)

A shining example of how fate, the master of destinies, takes an active part in everyday life, is shown in the story of how Peter Grant, popular KMOX announcer and assistant Program Director of the Voice of St. Louis, entered the field of radio broadcasting.

Peter, a graduate of the Washington University Law School, had just taken his state bar examination, which if he was successful would permit him to practice law. Yes, it would allow him to enter the profession which took five years of hard work at the University. Peter was sitting at home one Monday morning late in July 1930, wondering when he would hear about the examination he had taken a few weeks before. While at breakfast, the mailman brought a notice that he had passed the bar examination and was now entitled to practice law in the state of Missouri. Boy was he happy! Happy was no word for it. Peter was simply walking on air. Of course, he wanted to tell all his friends the good news, one friend in particular, David Flournoy, a continuity writer of KMOX. So hurriedly Peter finished his breakfast and immediately went to the studios of KMOX and told Dave the good news.

While Peter was at the station, a dramatization was about to be broadcast. The character actor who played one of the leading roles was late for the program. As this was the first time that the actor had ever been late, the program director waited until the last moment, expecting him to show up at any time. But time flew swiftly, and still the actor did not make his appearance. Five minutes passed. Three minutes passed. Then at two minutes before the program was to be broadcast the program director began to worry. Someone around the studio had to fill this leading part. Who could do it? He rushed in every office to see if he could find someone to substitute for the missing actor. He entered Dave Flournoy’s office, whom Peter Grant was visiting. “Dave,” he cried, “You’ve got to take this part. The play starts in a few minutes.” Dave replied “I’m not much of an actor but I’ll try.” Suddenly Dave had a bright idea.

Pointing to Peter Grant, he said, “Here’s the man that can do the job. He’s had a world of experience in dramatics at school.” Time was then short. In fact the announcer had already begun to announce the coming dramatization. The program director turned to Peter who was then bewildered and surprised at the sudden turn of events and said “Here’s your script.

You take the part of John, a jovial fellow who enjoys practical jokes.” Too dumbfounded to refuse, Peter was pushed into the studio to appear before a microphone for the first time and to read a script which he had never seen before. Peter didn’t even know the story. He had to watch his cues and figure out what was to follow. However, with all these difficulties, Peter’s acting was splendid.

It seemed as if fate had given him his dramatic training at school for this one purpose. Yes, perhaps fate had a hand in making him president of the Thysus and Quadrangle Clubs, dramatic organizations at Washington University. Yes, perhaps it was fate who was responsible for his appearance in “Tame Oats,” “Rosita,” “Hi Hat,” Ship Ahoy” and “Si Si Senorita,” which were produced at Washington University. Yes, too, perhaps it was fate that brought Peter to the studios of KMOX that morning, and maybe fate had a hand in keeping the character actor from making his appearance. Who knows?

But it was not fate that made Peter one of the most popular and talented announcers on the staff of KMOX. It was not fate that earned for him the position as assistant program director of KMOX. It was not fate that gave him the difficult task of forming structure of announcing the Voice of St. Louis program which is heard for a full hour over the coast-to-coast network of the Columbia Broadcasting System every Sunday morning. No, fate did not take a part here, hard work was the guiding hand that led Peter to the position he now holds. Yes, ever since that fateful day when he substituted, he has stayed in the radio business. He has forgotten all about law, even though he is eligible to practice at any day. All of his efforts have been bent on the task of making himself more fitted for radio broadcasting, and his efforts have not been in vain for he now plays a very important part in the program presentations of KMOX, the Voice of St. Louis, one of the most powerful radio stations in America.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 11/14/1931)