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by Yanner Alexander

Bob Thomas’ favorite flavor is chocolate…Danny Seyforth takes vanilla. Those are the only differences between KWK’s Frank and Ernest.

Danny is Frank and Bob is Ernest. They met when Bob was announcing one of Danny’s programs about three years ago, January, 1930. Danny stopped by the studio to renew the friendship. Danny started playing the piano…Bob aired his tenor…they traded gags…and a new act was born.

Their audition was a success, but on the day set for their first broadcast, Danny took sick – grippe – and it was postponed. Then the habit of doing the same thing began with Bob developing the symptoms, and the debut was set ahead another week.

The false starts didn’t mean anything. When they did get going they clicked immediately. The original schedule of two broadcasts a week was increased to three, and then to every weekday.

There’s no professional jealousy, that bugaboo of so many successful teams. When Danny hits a false note, it doesn’t happen often, but Danny’s not perfect – Bob doesn’t beef about it afterwards. If Bob makes a mistake – silence again.

Bob prepares Monday’s jokes and Tuesday’s riddles and they collaborate on the Saturday playettes. Danny creates Margie and her mother on Wednesday and selects the old favorite tunes and poems for Thursday and Friday. He also does all the musical programs as Bob’s sports announcing keeps him pretty busy.
For the past two years they have been going south in the spring with the Cardinals and with Bob’s father, Thomas Patrick Convey, president of KWK. They trek along with the ball club and barnstorm all the radio stations along the route. Helps build up their names and fame, and, incidentally, gives Bob and opportunity to get acquainted with the ball club over again in preparation for his sports announcing.

Bob’s five feet nine and 160 pounds, light brown hair, hazel eyes. Danny’s a smaller, darker edition. He wears his moustache on a schedule. He shaved it off for three months because Bob didn’t like it. Now he’s starting it again for another three months. Danny carries an art gum eraser around with him to keep his black and white sports shoes clean. Bob has a passion for singing lead in a trio or quartet. Any time he sees one in a practice session, he joins it, and is immensely proud of himself if he succeeds in carrying the tenor well.

They use the same desk, officially Bob is Robert Thomas Convey, vice president of KWK. They don’t borrow one another’s ties, which may be one reason they never quarrel. But they have sweaters to match and generally buy the same sort of clothes. They both play golf, although Bob goes around in the early eighties and Danny’s score sometimes looks more like a batting average. They swim, too, at the Convey summer home in Kirkwood, where Danny spends most of his time. They like the same type of girl. Blonde or brunette not specified, but no girlish gigglers, please! When they order dinner, it’s just a repetition of “I’ll take the same,” until it comes to the ice cream.

(Originally published in RAE, 6/18/1932)

Harmony Duo Now Heard On Old Judge And Norge Programs
Unceasing in their efforts in search for new radio talent through various sources, the Program Department of Station KWK discovered Frank and Ernest – that well known comedy and harmony team who recently celebrated their 200th broadcast after having been on the air for the past ten months. Always on the alert for a new feature, the Program Department immediately recognized in these two young men the ability which they possess. The Department’s confidence has not been betrayed as this team of popular entertainers is now being featured on the David G. Evans Coffee Company program as well as the Norge Company program.

This team is endowed with the ability and talent, and before many months these young men should appear as brilliant stars on the radio horizon.

“Wonderful, magnificent!” exclaims the radio listener as the strains of the theme song of the Norge Company of Missouri filter through the loudspeaker. These programs are heard Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday evenings over KWK.

Featured in these broadcasts is the Viking Orchestra, composed of sixteen of the leading musicians in St. Louis. The guest artists on these programs consist of a baritone, tenor, a blues trio and a harmony comedy team.
KWK is to be complimented on these programs as they embody everything musically from grand opera to jazz with the result that these presentations are becoming the most popular on that station.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 12/26/1931).

KWK Introduces World’s Youngest Radio Announcer
KWK has the world’s youngest radio announcer. He is 5 years old. His name is Don Cosby and he is the son of Clarence Cosby (general manager of the station).

Last week the baby announcer officiated as master of ceremonies during the broadcast of the Frank and Ernest program, a regular feature at the station. He introduced the program, announced the numbers and closed it, with all the flourish and confidence of a regular announcer.

During the program his mother and father and members of the studio staff watched from the spectators’ section of the studio.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 6/11/1932).

by Yanner Alexander

If John Harrington has an ambition tucked away in his upper left hand desk drawer, it’s to be a big time sports announcer, always providing St. Louis is the home base.

Not a spectator sportsman. Looks like a football player and was. Played guard at University of Arkansas. A three-letter man at Kirkwood H.S. Basketball, football and baseball ranked in that order of his affections.
Baseball worked its way up with him. An outfielder in his senior year at high without playing at all. Now when he broadcasts Cardinal games, he yells so enthusiastically that Thomas Patrick Convey wants him to pipe down a little.

And it’s not a pose. Talking two to three hours from Sportsman’s Park is a grind, and he prefers to take his baseball on off afternoons without benefit of remote control. Believes nearly every St. Louisan is well educated in the fine points of the game, citing the diminishing number of technical queries received by him and other members of the KWK staff – most of them accounted for by the annual crop of small boys. Never misses a local football game and wishes he could announce them over the air.

Born in New York some 23 years ago, Chicago, then St. Louis became his home. Likes his “Saturday night town” better than any other. His program, if any, includes marrying, a pleasant home in the country, two good automobiles, a salary of around $500 a month, just enough work and plenty of time for play. Doesn’t think he’s bright or ambitious, but isn’t so bashful you’d notice it.

Started this interview by spiking the report that he’s engaged to a beautiful blonde. Dates more than one girl answering that description, anyhow. Also, likes them rather small and dark.

However, he’s letting all kinds of engagements slide until fall when he returns from hermiting it out on the river. Let the mountain come—. He’s living out at Drake with Sterling Harkins, whose wife and baby have gone to Mobile, Ala., for the season, and several other congenials. It’s a forty minute drive to the studios.

Working on an alternating schedule, he’s able to get in lots of swimming, his favorite sport as a participant. Was a life guard at Osage Country Club three summers, the hardest job he ever had.

Oh yes, in case you don’t already know and can’t wait for television, he has curly brown hair, nice blue eyes, turned up nose and the beginning of a swell tan. And he likes spinach.

(Originally published in Radio & Entertainment 5/29/1932)

In the early days of radio, the nights were filled with music, but not just any music. In fact, there were very few records being played.

Those nighttime AM radio signals that skipped across the ether to far points unknown usually carried the live sounds of big bands performing in hotels, and St. Louis radio was no exception.

The first live band broadcast in the country was probably on Detroit’s WWJ September 14, 1920. Most scholars credit Vincent Lopez with being the first band leader to be heard regularly on radio, tracing his first broadcast back to November 27, 1921 on WJZ in New York. This was before St. Louis had regular local stations. He would later be heard on KSD via the NBC radio network.

By the time KSD signed on here, its featured musical group was the orchestra from the Statler Hotel. An article in Greater St. Louis magazine in March of 1923 noted, “High class concerts by bands and orchestras…are a frequent source of delight to this station’s great and far-flung audience.” Remote broadcasts in the late ‘20s originated from the Hotel Jefferson and Hotel St. Regis. Later, in the 1930s, the station would broadcast live remotes of the bands playing at the Meadowbrook Country Club in suburban Overland, often feeding these shows to the NBC Network.

That era, in St. Louis and around the country, was fraught with the economic turbulence of the Great Depression. Few people had what is known today as discretionary income, and the radio provided a cost-free diversion from life’s problems. It also provided free entertainment and escapism. Ironically, in a time of economic depression, radio experienced tremendous growth.

Talk with people who lived in that time and they’ll tell you about the importance of radio in their lives. They’ll also remember the late night big band remotes, and those who lived outside the nation’s cities would listen and dream of a day when they could witness those broadcasts firsthand. By 1934, writes Jim Cox in his book “Music Radio,” surveys showed dance music to be the most popular entertainment form on the radio.

A quick survey of St. Louis radio station listings in 1932 and 1933 shows numerous nightly big band remotes: KWK – Irving Rose’s Hotel Jefferson Orchestra, Harry Lange’s & Ted Jansen’s orchestras at Forest Park Highlands, Irving Rose & Joseph Reichman performing on the Statler roof in summer; Joe Reichman and the Hotel Chase Orchestra, Ray DeVinney’s Orchestra at Diane’s Club; KMOX – Al Lyons at Meadowbrook, Charlie Booth’s Varsity Club Orchestra from the Skyway Inn, Bobby Meeker’s Hotel Jefferson Orchestra, Joe Reichman’s Orchestra from the Hotel Coronado, Charlie Booth’s Castle Ballroom Orchestra, Ivan Epinoff’s Orchestra from the Coronado Hotel; WIL – Bill Bailey at the Canton Tea Garden, Al Roth at Majestic Gardens, and Jackson-Marable’s Syncopators at Sauter’s Park.

Of course, these broadcast did more than fill air time. They provided advertising for the venues, all of which were competing for the few discretionary dollars the listeners had. The promotion extended to predictable gimmicks like this one described in Radio & Entertainment August 13, 1932:

“It is rumored that Sauter’s Park, whose music is broadcast nightly over WIL will open a second dance floor. Two bands are presented simultaneously every Saturday and Sunday evenings and now they will open a dance floor for old time dances only. The band will feature waltzes, two steps and square dances.”

Big band remotes were standard broadcast fare through the ‘40s and into the early ‘50s, featuring nationally known groups and territory bands. Buddy Moreno, who settled in St. Louis in the ‘50s, made a name for himself on national broadcasts as he and his band headlined network shows from venues in New York, Chicago, and even the Chase Hotel in St. Louis. Harold Koplar hired him and his band in the late ‘50s as the hotel’s band.

In the golden age of radio, the live big band remotes did what radio did best. Couples would turn on the radio and dance in their parlors, experiencing a momentary escape from reality through radio’s theater of the mind.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 3/06)

Garnett A. Marks, born March 21, 1899, at St. Louis, Missouri, educated in and graduated from St. Louis grammar and high schools, enlisted in the 138th U.S. Infantry shortly after graduating from Soldan High school in the class of January 1917. Served in this regiment until discharged because of prolonged illness at Camp Doniphan, Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. Returned home and after return to health joined the ambulance corps of the American Red Cross, serving as a driver of this unit in France until after the Armistice.

For several months after returning to the states was engaged in newspaper work as a reporter in Philadelphia, then became interested in aviation and served as an observer and photographer with the 13th Squadron, Surveillance, at Kelly Field, San Antonio, Texas.

First entered radio with KFI, Los Angeles, as a “song plugger” for a Los Angeles music publishing house. Later he became staff baritone and announcer.

In the autumn of 1926 he returned to St. Louis, and joined the KMOX staff.

He was offered the position of sports announcer for KMOX, and throughout the seasons of 1927 and 1928 Garnett broadcast every game played in St. Louis, and on rainy days and open dates he could be heard giving play by play accounts furnished by ticker of the most important out of town game on such days.

Thousands of letters attested to his popularity and outstanding success as a baseball announcer and the opinion was almost unanimous that he was without peer in this line of endeavor. As a reward for his untiring and exceptional efforts to faithfully serve the vast audience with accurate, up to the minute and interesting baseball dope for 1928, Garnett was given a trip to New York to witness and help describe via the Columbia network the opening games of the series between the Yankees and the Cards played in the Yankee Stadium there.

In 1929, he returned to the Pacific Coast, singing in numerous sound productions created on Hollywood lots.
When work before the movie microphone was slack, he free lanced among several of the Hollywood and Los Angeles radio stations as announcer and singer. Late in 1930 he received an excellent offer from WENR, Chicago, to come on there as an announcer, and immediately installed himself as a favorite with the listeners of that station, which was absorbed by the NBC on March 1st, 1931.

So it was not long after that his friends throughout the land heard him as a network announcer on programs emanating from the Merchandise Mart, Chicago.

Because of the uncertain health of his father, Garnett returned to St. Louis late in November of 1931. He became an announcer at KMOX.

Recently he joined the staff of WIL, where he has taken over the Breakfast Club Express and can be heard every week day from 7 to 9:15 a.m. He also acts in the capacity of WIL news reporter. His hobbies are writing and aviation, the latter not altogether meeting with the approval of his family. His favorite sports, many of which he still indulges in, and the order of their popularity with him, are swimming, football, baseball, and horse back riding. He is married and has a charming young daughter.

(Originally published in Radio & Entertainment 7/16/1932).

It’s hard to imagine baseball fans pledging their loyalty to a radio play-by-play man named “Jerome,” but they loved him. To the listeners, and everyone else who was a baseball fan, he was better known as “Dizzy.”

Jerome Herman “Dizzy” Dean took to the airwaves as the announcer for the Cardinals and Browns during the 1941 season, with his broadcasts carried on KWK and KXOK. Truth be known, his given name was Jay Hanna Dean, but changed it to Jerome Herman Dean near the beginning of his career on the diamond. He had retired from playing the game May 14, 1941, and told the press of his plans to visit the Falstaff Brewery the next day. Falstaff sponsored the St. Louis teams’ broadcasts and, according to Curt Smith in his book “Stars of the Game,” Dean said, “Think I’m going to like this here play-by-play.”
Dizzy Dean began his first broadcast telling listeners, “I hope I’m as good a sports announcer as I was a pitcher…Now I know how a prisoner feels walking to his death.”

The listeners loved him, and Dean played his hillbilly persona for all it was worth. In Smith’s description of Dean’s grammar, “Runners ‘slud’…batters ‘swang,’…pitchers ‘throwed’ the ball with great ‘spart’ [spirit]…a hitter could look ‘mighty hitterish’ or stand ‘confidentially’ at the plate.”

The grammatical ruse worked. Within a year, the Globe-Democrat ran a lengthy article by Paul Tredway headlined, “That Eminent Linguist, That Noted Grammarian, That Grand and Dodier Orator – Dizzy Dean.”

Patrick Huber and David Anderson told the October 2001 Missouri Conference on History that Dizzy Dean’s Ozarkian slang even prompted Falstaff to issue a booklet titled “The Dizzy Dean Dictionary and What’s What in Baseball.” Included in the ghostwritten introduction was the explanation that the booklet was intended to “clear up a lot of misunderstandings that people has about my baseball lingo.”

In 1946, in a publicity manager’s dream, word got out that the English Teachers Association of Missouri had complained to the Federal Communications Commission that Dean’s way of talking had a “bad influence” on their pupils. The nation’s print journalists had a field day with the story. The Globe-Democrat took the teachers to task in an editorial. Both national wire services carried regular updates. Telegrams poured in to radio stations. Huber and Anderson noted Dean received 150 supportive telegrams one night during one of his broadcasts.

There were articles published all over the country. One woman chastised the “intolerant” teachers. Similar support came from The Baltimore Sun and The Sporting News. Dean’s legions of fans sprang to his defense. The “Saturday Review of Literature” wrote a two-page editorial supporting Dean, concluding with “Our private hunch is that the teachers won’t get to first base.”

That hunch was correct. In fact, it seems there never was a formal complaint filed with the F.C.C. The entire vociferation may have been based on a ruse perpetrated by a very smart publicist.

Whoever was responsible had not considered the reaction of Sam Breadon, the Cardinals’ owner. Shortly after the dust settled, Breadon announced his intention to create a six-station Cards’ radio network and said he wanted “dignified” and “conventional” announcers. The play-by-play team didn’t include Dizzy Dean, despite his huge popularity among the fans. Former Cardinals’ manager Gabby Street would be joined in the booth by an up-and-coming young announcer named Harry Caray.

For the next five baseball seasons, Dizzy Dean was heard broadcasting the games of the hapless St. Louis Browns, but he had the last laugh.

In 1953, Falstaff hired Dizzy Dean to broadcast their Saturday “Game of the Week” on ABC-TV. He later moved to CBS-TV for the same assignment. His Ozarkian way of broadcasting baseball had propelled him to the top spot among broadcasters.

Insiders knew about his schtick. Quoted in “Voices of the Game,” Mel Allen remembered, “Once he took off solo, doing what passed for play-by-play, it was show biz time.” Allen even told author Curt Smith about a Dean misstep: “Once he said ‘slid’ correctly, by mistake, and he corrected himself. He wanted to goof up – it was part of the vaudeville.”

Later, Dean even admitted being a showman. “Naturally, I play around with my stuff on the radio, but I ain’t dumb. I know most of the folks listening are from my part of the country – mostly from the Ozarks. They like it. A guy’s got to do that sort of thing in this business.”

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 12/05)

When Viola Jeanne Chassels graduated from Salem High School in Illinois in 1931, she may have had the typical high school dreams of the time: get married, settle down, raise a family. Instead she became a well-known radio singer.

Three girls from Salem decided to cast their lot in the big city to the West. Jean, as she was known, was the lead singer in the group, which had been known around Salem as The Chassels Trio. Her mother apparently managed the group, and documentation shows Julia Chassels set her sights high for the girls.

Woody Klose, one of the popular announcers on KMOX, sent her a letter inviting the trio to an audition at 8:30 on the morning of May 28, 1932:

“This audition will make you eligible to appear on the broadcast of the KMOX Public Audition Program, which goes on the air at 9:30 o’clock, a.m…You are only allowed two minutes at the most.”

The three girls, Jean, Vivian Griffin, and Marie Hamilton had a chance to appear on KMOX, provided they made the cut at the audition.

Julia’s effort paid off. The Harmonettes, as the group was now known, were regularly featured on several KMOX short-form variety shows, which usually lasted fifteen minutes. They’d sing three selections with a piano or organ accompaniment. Most of these shows were “sustaining” at first, meaning there was no sponsor.

Later, as the economy improved and The Depression began to fade, their shows acquired a sponsor. That was due, in part, to the backing of Ted Straeter, a KMOX programmer who had a successful side business as a producer of talent for KMOX shows.

In early December of 1932, another letter came to Salem from St. Louis.

Dear Mrs. Chassels: I should like to have you and the girls come to my studio on Thursday, December the eighth at eleven in the morning, at which time I should like to discuss plans for work with the girls trio. Kindly let me know immediately if this will be satisfactory.
Ted Straeter #2 Studio Building, Taylor and Olive

Straeter and his partner Myles Hasgall were so well-known for their work that they were credited at the beginning and end of the shows that featured talent they had discovered, as found on this KMOX script from 1933: “Myles Hasgall and Ted Straeter, maestros of music in St. Louis present their regular Wednesday evening program. Tonight Hasgall and Straeter present The Harmonettes.”

A newspaper clipping of the era noted, “Union Electric Light and Power Company signed them for its KMOX Thursday night show after their first audition.”

Back in Salem, the town was proud of its radio stars. An ad in the local paper read: “Dorothy Perkins radio program over KMOX St. Louis, each Tuesday night 7:45…Three Salem girls who have made good in big time radio broadcasting. Tune in next Tuesday night and enjoy the program.”

As their popularity increased, two of the original members of the Harmonettes married and moved on, but Jean was the one constant, and it’s safe to assume there were a lot of proud people in Salem when the CBS Radio Network began national broadcasts from the KMOX studios featuring the group.

There must have been something in the air in the 1930s at KMOX. Jean Chassels met a guy at the station who was also interested in music. He was single, and he spent a lot of time working as staff arranger and pianist for the Karl Hohengarten and Al Roth big bands, even finding time for his own musical show of piano selections seven times a week. He also did some arranging for the Harmonettes.

In 1938, Jean Chassels gave up her singing career on KMOX. She married that music man, who by that time had moved to a job at KSD, and became Mrs. Russ David.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 10/05)