Hildred Ransom, who is known to the Early Morning Farm Folks on KMOX as Aunt Sarah, has a pretty hard time keeping up her end with all the kidding she has to take from the group of entertainers that make up the program. She does her bit – too much of a bit says nephew Charlie Stookey – each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 6:45 a.m.
It’s pretty hard to be argumentative at so early an hour but Aunt Sarah has the good of the public on her conscience and she feels that they ought to be told about a great many helpful things. True, nephew Charlie doesn’t agree that there is such a thing as a waterwitch nor that potatoes ought to be planted in the light of the moon, but Aunt Sarah knows about these things and she feels that she should give the listeners the benefit of her advice.
As a matter of fact, Aunt Sarah is very elusive but we have our doubts if she even faintly resembles the gossipy widow from Hidalgo that she represents. She is a very busy stenographer during the working days but not so busy that she doesn’t have time to think up ways to defeat Charlie. What’s more, she does it, for all of the fan letters side with her judgment.
(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 3/4/33)
To the confidential tones of “Whispering” comes the melancholy voice of Art Gillham, one of the most famous of radio stars and the “Master of Pessimism.” He sighs and moans and pleads with everyone not to smile. His theory is that a good cry makes most folks happy.
Art Gillham, who later appeared on KMOX
He really excites pity when he describes himself as a bald old man weighing 375 pounds. But like his Syncopated Pessimism which may paint the world dark but leaves the cloud’s silver lining always ashining, this Art Gillham, instead of weighing 375 pounds, weighs about 170, he is six feet tall and very erect – not bald headed, for he has a wealth of dark hair and he is always in a hurry but he needs to be – for besides drinking about 15 cups of coffee daily, Art broadcasts the “Afternoon Variety” program on WIL from three to four, the “As You Like It” program nightly from 11:30 to 12:30, and the famous “Syncopated Pessimism” programs on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 7:45 p.m. Besides, Art has charge of WIL’s Artist Bureau.
Gillham graduated from the old Central High School here in St. Louis. After much persuasion he decided with the family that he would study medicine and so entered St. Louis University Medical School. Two weeks passed and a traveling orchestra came to town; one performance and Art’s resolution took flight and so did Art. He traveled to the Pacific coast with the orchestra and became its leader. It was while traveling with the orchestra that he and two of the boys collaborated in writing the words and music of “The Hesitation Blues,” which was an instant hit and four million copies were sold.
In December 1922 Art became an accompanist on Station WDAP, the Drake Hotel in Chicago. One night the boys dared him to sing over the radio, he took the dare, and since then, Art has whispered his way up the ladder of radio success. He was one of the first troubadours of the air and has sung over three hundred stations. He participated in the first national hookup program in the United States. In 1924 he became and exclusive Columbia Recording Artist and has made over 170 records for them. He has written over 30 popular song hits. February 1930 he signed up as an exclusive Columbia Broadcasting System Artist.
Last July, when Art’s mother was injured in an accident, he dropped his work and came to St. Louis to be with her. When he realized that her recovery would be slow he decided to remain in St. Louis.
(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 12/5/1931)
The question came in a phone call in October, 2004. David Ohlemeyer’s company, The Lawrence Group, was in the process of rehabbing St. Louis’ Marquette Building. Atop the building, an extra room had been built, and there was also a huge radio tower on the roof.
Ohlemeyer had found some papers and wanted to know, just out of curiosity, whether a radio station had operated there. Since the place was filled with construction workers and the elevators were out of order, a 20-story climb was in order.
Sure enough, the room he had talked about looked like it had been used as a studio. There were even a few perforated acoustical tiles still on the wall. But no documentation could be found to link a station to a studio here.
Those papers he’d found were a gold mine. They were bills of sale for the tower and its antenna, made out to Thomas Patrick, Inc. at the Chase Hotel, which was the parent company of KWK. The tower, purchased in December of 1946, was 270 feet tall. When erected, the tower’s top light was 574 feet above street level, making it the highest broadcast tower in the area. But the antenna to be installed on the tower was for an FM station. KWK was an AM station.
All of the equipment was delivered to 314 North Broadway, then known as the Boatmen’s Bank Building. Thomas Patrick, Inc., had been given permission in 1945 to erect an FM station on a frequency of 95.3 megacycles. The station came on the air in September of 1946, so this tower would not have been in use initially. The Federal Communications Commission changed KWK-FM’s frequency to 99.1 the following year. The change appears to have come in August, 1947, thus bringing the new tower into use. But the mystery of the studio remains unclear.
In October 1946, an article in the Globe-Democrat told of KWK’s purchase of a two-story former bank building at the corner of Fourth and Pine streets downtown, a block away from the then Boatmen’s Bank Building. The article stated “One of the most modern broadcasting studios in the Midwest has been planned” for the building.
But the best-laid plans failed to become reality. For unknown reasons, the building was never refurbished. Three years later, May 9, 1949, KWK-AM and FM moved their studios to the building at Twelfth and Cole where the Globe-Democrat’s FM station KWGD was being shut down. At the same time, the company that owned KWK and KWK-FM changed its name to KWK, Inc.
The new building had its own broadcast tower on site, rendering the tower atop the Boatmen’s Building redundant. By the end of the year, the St. Louis Star-Times entered into an agreement to buy and use the tower on The Boatmen’s Building for its station, KXOK-FM.
There was never a mention of permanent studios at the Broadway address but an interview many years later provided an explanation. KCFM was broadcasting from the tower after a disastrous fire destroyed their facilities, and owner Harry Eidelman made reference to the fact that his announcers were using the “temporary studio on the 22nd floor of the Boatmen’s Bank building.”
The temporary studio had been put in place after construction of the tower so the radio station would have a place to originate broadcasts in such an emergency.
(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 1/2009).
It all began innocently enough. A 10-year-old St. Louis boy was thumbing through a catalog of amateur radio equipment. The year was 1912, so the best any radio amateur could hope for was the ability to send or receive Morse Code.
The youngster built a receiver, and five years later he built a transmitter and applied for a government amateur radio license. His application was denied due to a government decree that all amateur transmitting equipment must be dismantled and remain so until the end of World War I.
Robert Coe eventually got his license at the end of the war. He was 17. Amateurs had begun experimenting with voice and sound transmission. In an interview with Joe Berman, Coe remembered a couple of his peers from the time – Lester Benson and William Wood – who would go on to build transmitters for several St. Louis radio stations and become owners of WIL.
Coe did some volunteer work as an operator at St. Louis University’s experimental station (9YK) and was even listed on the school’s faculty, but he eventually took a paying job selling radios at Domestic Electric Company.
Within a few months, Coe was hired by the Stix, Baer & Fuller department store in St. Louis, but he wasn’t selling anything.
Instead, they wanted him to build a radio station for them. The studio was constructed in the store’s music department, next to phonographs, records and pianos that were for sale. At the top of the building, the transmitter was placed among the water tanks.
Robert Coe went to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch station, KSD, the following year. Working for the Pulitzer station, he noted in a memoir, was a professional dream because the company always bought the best equipment available. He also served as the operating engineer for KMOX for a three-year period.
The kid who began by building an experimental transmitter in his home later became one of the top engineers in television, putting KSD-TV on the air in St. Louis before moving to New York for jobs with the Dumont and ABC Television networks. He taught communications at Ohio University in the late ‘60s. Robert Coe died in 1975.
Helen G. Hatfield, announcer and program director of station WSBF, of Stix, Baer & Fuller department store in St. Louis, Mo., is pictured.
Miss Hatfield is one of the few women announcers who have really made good in radio. Perhaps her success can be accounted for by the fact that she started in radio back when the little five-watter that first used the WSBF call was considered some broadcaster. She has grown up with radio and in doing so has become part of radio itself.
Miss Hatfield tells us she has brown eyes and short brown curls. Her many friends say she is much more animated than she appears to be in this photograph. And she would have to be animated to be as versatile as she is. Besides putting all of WSBF’s programs on the air she fills in announcing such sports as baseball, football and even prize fights.
Before the lure of the microphone reached out for Miss Hatfield, she was a student at the University of Illinois, preparing to become a domestic science teacher. Now in one little talk at the microphone she teaches a class larger than would have been the combined classes she would have taught in a lifetime of work.
When the radio business caught fire in the early 1920s, there were several major types of owners, each with good reasons to build radio stations. Newspapers used their stations to promote their papers, broadcasting news and telling listeners they could read more in the next edition. Communications companies like AT&T and Westinghouse would realize immediate benefits as people bought radios: AT&T leased phone lines for programming and Westinghouse sold radios to consumers. In many cities department stores also owned stations to sell radios to listeners.
Here in St. Louis, Stix, Baer & Fuller built WCK in 1922, broadcasting its first program April 18 from 6:45 PM – 8 PM on 360 meters (approximately 830 Kc.) Mary Jones was in charge of programming, which was aired Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings. St. Louis Mayor Henry Kiel opened the show, which originated from the 11th floor studios of the downtown Stix building. There were musical numbers performed by former Metropolitan Grand Opera soprano Agnes Hanick, her sister Florence Hanick, and the Rush Musical Company.
While this may not sound terribly enlightening or entertaining, it was standard fare on radio through the decade of the 20s. Three years later the station announced it would broadcast exercise classes at 7:00 each morning. “Tune in on the radio and take on a manly waistline this week” read the lead in the Globe-Democrat on January 18, 1925. The “first-of-its-kind” broadcast in St. Louis only required a Turkish towel as exercise equipment, and although they “had never been taught to women heretofore…the exercises are equally healthful in their case.”
The station was now at 1100 Kc, although there is no documentation showing all its frequency assignments. We do know that WCK changed its call letters about this time to WSBF, reflecting the name of its owner. A publication of the Missouri Historical Society incorrectly stated WSBF signed on in 1922. It also quoted Arthur Baer as saying the station “…was a great new advertising opportunity, so we thought we should try it.”
Apparently Mr. Baer’s interest in supporting a radio station began to wane. On the evening of February 27, 1928, a Miss Helen Hatfield told listeners that WSBF would no longer broadcast. She told newspaper reporters she was not authorized to say anything about the reasons behind the company’s decision.
Several months later WSBF rose from the ashes under the ownership of Mississippi Valley Broadcasting. They signed on June 12, 1927 with studios on the mezzanine of the Claridge Hotel. Directors were Michael Bass, president of the St. Louis Public School Patrons’ Alliance, J.B. Toles, and Gene Jordan. The trio pledged to work with the public schools in St. Louis.
WSBF was listed at 1160 Kc early in 1928 but had been deleted by the Federal Radio Commission by the end of that year.
(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 6/2001)
