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When Miriam Blue took off her rubber gloves, put down her janitor’s supplies and began talking into a microphone at KMOX radio in 1975, she was following in the footsteps of a man who did the same thing nearly 40 years earlier.

Sol Williams, like Miss Blue, was an African-American (the term in those days was “Negro”) janitor when KMOX occupied studios in the Mart Building in 1938. Co-workers at the station appreciated Sol’s wit and happy banter as he mopped the floors. His advanced age of 70 didn’t stop him from living life to the fullest and loving it.

A debut on KMOX for Sol Williams came at an unexpected moment, a time when sports announcer France Laux suddenly found himself without an expected guest at the beginning of his nightly sports show. Williams had been working as a janitor at KMOX for 10 years, and Laux’s producer knew the man loved sports and had lots of opinions. Larry Neville ran out into the hallway. “Sol,” he shouted.

Drop that mop and come on in here.”

On the air, Laux was stretching, not knowing what was going on. As he saw Sol being escorted into the studio, he didn’t miss a beat. “…and our guest for the evening is the celebrated sports authority, Sol Williams.” There was no evidence of microphone fright, and management quickly found out how listeners felt. Fan mail came pouring in. Sol Williams became a regular guest on the “Hot Stove League” program.

In the late 1930s, almost everything heard on the radio was scripted, but not Sol. Laux reportedly wanted Williams to be himself, and a script would have hampered that. One of the traits that endeared the janitor to the listeners was his humanness. Sol was known for shifting his allegiance if his favorite teams or players let him down. As he once said on the program, “I picks ’em now. There ain’t nothin’ said about me having to stay on a team if it lets me down.”

Miriam Blue’s big break came in October of 1975 as she dusted in the KMOX studios while Jack Carney was on the air. At age 61, Miss Blue, as she was known to the staff, was a welcome sight in the studios at 1 Memorial Drive. Known for her constant upbeat approach to life, Miss Blue rode the bus from her home in East St. Louis each day. When asked how she was doing, her consistent answer was a sincere “All is well.”

As she told it later in her career, Miriam Blue was dusting in Carney’s studio and he began asking her questions. She answered in her usual upbeat manner, not knowing the microphones were on. The reaction from the audience was immediate, just as it had been with Sol Williams, and Carney created a regular slot twice a week at 10:15 on his program for her. She had advice for callers who phoned the program with their problems, and she was later incorporated into Carney’s wildly popular “As the Stomach Turns” skits. She joined the broadcasters’ union, AFTRA, and was paid for her broadcast appearances.

After he got finished on the air each evening, Sol. Williams returned to his cleaning chores around the KMOX studios, and Miss Blue did too, even though a national spotlight began to shine her way. The Associated Press ran a feature article about her broadcast success, which led to an article in People magazine and another on CBS-TV. The game show “To Tell the Truth” flew her to New York to appear as a guest star and she was featured in “The David Susskind Show” on CBS Radio. The New York trip was not only her first time on a plane. It was also her first visit to Lambert Field in St. Louis.
She continued on Carney’s show, as well as in her job as KMOX janitor until she was hospitalized in the early ’80s suffering from a stroke. She passed away in the hospital.

Miriam Blue was once asked by a reporter whether she was making a lot more money in her new status as a KMOX celebrity. Her response was vintage Miriam Blue: “I just couldn’t be happy as the idle rich.”

(Reprinted with permission of the “St. Louis Journalism Review.” Originally published 11/00)

KFUO-AM Radio and Classic99.com broadcast operations have relocated from the Concordia campus in Clayton to the LCMS International Center Chapel at 1333 S. Kirkwood Road. The station had been located in Clayton since 1924 and moved to Kirkwood on Monday, June 24 [2013].

Prominent studio space in the LCMS International Center lobby will allow the station to show off KFUO as a great asset to the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and allow it to to expand out its gospel radio ministry. The move will benefit the church by increasing the synergy between the radio station and other Synod departments and ministries.

(Originally published in the Webster-Kirkwood Times 8/2/2013).

1280 Kilocycles – – – 234.2 Meters

KWK which until a month ago carried the call letters KFVE is now in its tenth month of operation in its present home and under its present ownership and management, the station having officially opened bearing the name of the International Life Insurance Company on March 17th, 1927.

It is generally conceded that KWK now ranks as St. Louis’ most progressive station. Its rapid rise to recognition started in April, 1927, when it scooped all other local stations and was first to present a play-by-play account of both the Cardinal and Brown Baseball Games (Ed. note: Some dispute this claim.) This feature won for the station thousands of followers. Through the broadcasting of nationally known orchestras from the Palm Room of the Hotel Chase it developed a large number of listeners who tuned in nightly to enjoy the music of the best orchestras in the St. Louis district.

Through its morning shoppers’ program another large following was developed, as it was the first station to present morning programs which were enjoyed.

In the month of October, the station gained a splendid reputation through its untiring efforts and successful work during the tornado disaster. It was the first station on the air with the news.

The Shut-In-Fund through which the station provides radio sets for the unfortunates who are shut in has been another nice feature that has won public favor and brought joy and happiness to many of the unfortunate in the St. Louis district.

The station’s standing in the community was most conclusively proven when more than twelve thousand listeners cast a vote by letter requesting the Federal Radio Commission to grant the station full time on its wave length while only forty-one voted against full time; and, though it is true full time was not granted by the commission, the station was only asked to give up two hours on Sunday to two other stations, namely WMAY and KFQA.

On December the first the station acquired the Blue Network programs from the National Broadcasting Company, and now broadcasts daily many national features, namely: Roxy and His Gang, Rise and Shine, Stromberg-Carlson Orchestra and Quintettes, The Sixty Continentals, The Torrid Tots, The Armand Company Girls, The Variety Hour, The Mediterranean Dance Band, The Ampico Hour, The Chicago Civic Opera Company’s Balkite Program, The Wrigley Wrigamarole, The Victor Hour, Collier’s Hour, Thomas Cook & Son Travelogue and a program by Montgomery Ward & Co., and the White Rock Mineral Springs Co. which starts next week.

On Sunday in each week, the station has also added the broadcast of a Little Symphony Concert with soloists from 12:00 to 2:00 P. M. followed by the St. Louis Symphony Pop Concerts through the courtesy of the Laclede Gas Light Company from 3:00 to 5:00 P. M.

Many new features and additional programs are being developed  and the most promising future appears to be in store for the station. It is the ambition of the entire staff and all those affiliated with the station that KWK  rank with the best in the west on or before the first birthday of the station which will be March 17th, 1928.

(Originally published in the International Life Broadcaster January 1928).

Station Policy
In this era of “Modern Radio”…resplendent with frenzied format…rapid-fire rhetoric…ear-splitting shrieks…and programming designed to set your teeth on edge…radio listeners are casting about frantically in this cackling cacophony (where even static can be soothing) for the small…still voice of sanity…programming designed to be listened to…with delight…not delirium.

In light of this need for common-sense listening and enlightened programming…K-SHE has painstakingly planned its listening day for the discriminating listener who expects more from radio than radio has been able to offer…until K-SHE.

Our format is adult programming for adult taste…adult intelligence and adult preference. Programming with a purpose.
K-SHE is the radio station in which people are interested.

Meet the Lady of FM
K-SHE began operations on February 11, at 94.7 Megacycles, serving an area, roughly circular, within fifty miles from Crestwood. Although she is still a very young lady, K-SHE has acquired a reputation with her listeners as a “good music” station, programming over 26 hours of better classical music weekly. This is almost double that of any commercial FM station in the area.

Full Dynamic Range Sound is heard exclusively on K-SHE. This is an electronic system, whereby music is reproduced and transmitted to the listener in exactly the way the artist performed it – the pianissimo passages are heard pianissimo – the fortissimo passages are heard fortissimo. Nothing has been added – nothing taken away. Music is alive – as though the work were being performed in the listener’s home.

Inherent in the FM system is good frequency response and freedom from static, distortion and natural or man-made interference. K-SHE has been painstakingly designed and constructed to take every advantage of these qualities. No effort or engineering talent has been spared to make K-SHE the finest-sounding station in this area. Distortion and compression on K-SHE have been brought to such a low level that they are almost unmeasurable. K-SHE sound is THE finest sound in the area.
Frequency response is flat to a fantastic range, far beyond the requirements of the FCC technical standards. Proof? Ask any listener.

Station image has carefully and rapidly been built into the operation of K-SHE. The call letters are always given with a female voice, with emphasis that K-SHE is the “LADY OF FM” with many moods. She is sophisticated, unpredictable, with the continental touch and ALWAYS INTERESTING.

Success? Many letters received by K-SHE are addressed to “the Sophisticated Lady” – “the Unpredictable Lady” – “the Lady of FM” – etc. Many telephone callers ask to speak to “The Lady.”

Finally, K-SHE is known as “:the station that DARES to be DIFFERENT.”

K-SHE is the area’s only FM station with a balanced program schedule; one that was designed, not an accident. Its programming is patterned after but not copied from successful FM operations in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

COMMENTARIES:
“Raconteur” nightly with Bud De Weese.
“Madamoiselle” weekly.
Garden Time weekly.
Cocktail Hour nightly
Over 11 hours of Comment weekly.
FEATURES:
Musical Comedy nightly
Variety and Comedy nightly.
Over 4 hours of Comedy weekly.
Over 4 hours of Broadway Musical Comedy weekly.
NEWS
Chain of Events.
News at the local level with weather every hour at the half hour during the day and between programs at night.
OPERA:
Complete performance each Sunday evening at 9:00 P.M. on “Night at the Opera.”
JAZZ:
Profiles in Jazz – two hours of better Jazz each Sunday at 4:00 P.M.
ROCK AND ROLL:
We’re not sorry – none on K-SHE.
You’ll find a veritable kaleidoscope of worthwhile, better listening on K-SHE, the station that truly DARES to be DIFFERENT.”

He may be strictly for the early birds, but Gary Owens takes his civic responsibilities seriously. On Station WIL from 5:30 to 9 each morning, he wakes up St. Louis. It takes some doing. Gary must first rouse himself, then his wife “Arty” (Arlette), then one-by-one the “cast of thousands” who assist him in his morning shenanigans. Despite the heavy labor, Gary insists he enjoys the routine – “especially around 4 ayem, when I make coffee in my pajamas.” (“Sometimes,” quips Gary, “I wish we had a percolator!”)…But the cast of thousands don’t wake easily. For the most part they’re a rascally bunch, destined to get coal in their stockings come Christmas. Among the leaders are Clinton Feemish, career nepotist; Fenwick Smoot, unlisted; The Marquis de Sade; and an amoeba named Frank. For a fictional break, Gary puts on his horn-rimmed glasses and plays “Uncle Don” reading the funnies. “Suddenly a huge black-lettering balloon comes out of the head of Rex Migraine, M.D.,” narrates the GO-man, “and in big, black letters spells, ‘Sorry, I can’t remove your pancreas for only $25; however I may be able to loosen it a bit’…The nurses in the series,” puns Gary, “are just too cute for wards.”…Back in Plankinton, South Dakota, some 24 years ago, Gary didn’t have such heavy duties. Just born, no matter how hard he cried, he couldn’t wake more than 750 sleepyheads – the entire Plankinton population. On the “GO” ever since, Gary’s been artist, journalist and deejay extraordinary. Gary also has the distinction of being the first American deejay to phone Moscow to ask if they kept a Top Forty list. “It was a Party Line,” Gary surmises. “They told me the U.S.S. R. prefers the classics.”…Because his wife Arty majored in psychology in college, she understands GO and shares all of his “real gone” enthusiasms – like sipping espresso and playing Monopoly. But then it’s time for WIL’s wake-up man to quiet down. By nature he’s not an insomniac, but, before drifting off, Gary likes to think about his great system for rabbit-hunting in St. Louis. “You just wait for the rabbit to come by,” says GO, “and make a noise like a carrot!”

(Originally published in TV/Radio Mirror 1/1959)

Holland E. Engle, announcer for KMOX, is the son of Olive and Harry E. Engle, pioneer residents of Fairmont, West Virginia. He comes honestly by his natural vocation which is entertaining, and his avocation, which is writing, having inherited these inclinations from his father, who was a newspaper man and vocalist.

Like many of our noted stars of radio, Holland Engle started his career as a child actor in 1910, when he played the juvenile lead in “The Little Wedding.” In 1912 when five years old, young Engle was playing a guitar before swinging doors for pennies, graduating finally into the inner “company rooms.”

Like other ingenious little boys of the time, Engle became fascinated by the radio when he was fourteen years old, and so he constructed a station of his own and broadcast from it.

Since that time he has performed over more than one hundred individual radio stations in the United States and Canada, and over the networks of the National and Columbia Systems several times. There are no outside hobbies for this radio enthusiast. He concentrates both serious and recreational interests in radio. His spare time is spent talking operators about the resistance in an antenna coupling condenser, or with continuity writers about “stunts.” His great ambition is to become affiliated with the Columbia Broadcasting System and win the Diction Award for five consecutive years.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 7/9/1932).