Radio Articles

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).

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)

The broadcast of the return of beer from Anheuser-Busch over KMOX last Thursday was hailed as the most successful heard during the two-hour CBS network program. Through the efforts of J.L. Van Volkenburg, Director of Operations, Walter “Hank” Richards, Program-Production Director, and Graham L. Tevis, Audio Engineer, the entire program necessitated accurate timing and numerous “remote” details clicked off perfectly.

France Laux was Master of Ceremonies of the program that included a broadcast from the warehouse where Marvin Mueller was in charge of describing the first trucks of beer that left the plant, another to the rail yards where Garnett Marks was heard and another to Lambert field where the first case of beer for President Roosevelt was loaded on a TWA plane. August A. Busch, Jr., addressed the nation upon the significance of the return of beer as it affects our economic structure.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 4/22/1933).

L.A. Benson at 32 is St. Louis’ Pioneer of Radio, Having Made First Broadcast and Installed City’s First Station.

Eleven years ago, L.A. Benson installed a radio receiver in an automobile and amazed the citizenry with a statement that the day would come when policemen would be in continuous communication with headquarters by means of radio.

He demonstrated his portable receiver to Chief of Police Martin O’Brien and a group of skeptics, who saw the device as an impractical and unnecessary invention.

Today, owners of short-wave radio sets are unimpressed when they hear police calls connecting headquarters with radio cars on the streets in all sections of the city. Radio police communication is an accomplished fact today and therefore commonplace.

Benson’s “dream” of eleven years ago is a reality now. But police radio communication is only one of the marvels of the era which has seen broadcasting develop into a major industry. He has been closely allied with every important step in radio broadcasting in this community, dating from the first broadcast sent from the basement in his little radio shop in 1920 – news of Harding’s election.

About a year later he established a record for long-distance radio broadcasting, having been heard as far away as Bristol, Conn. This achievement was flashed throughout the world as important news.

Ten years ago – he was 22 years old then – Benson installed radio station KSD and operated it for several months. That was his first adventure in broadcasting on a large scale. Now he is president of Missouri Broadcasting Corporation, owners of WIL.

Benson was the first St. Louisan to receive a commercial radio license. He began experimenting with wireless telegraphy when he was 14 years old and three years later ran away from home so he could enlarge the scope of his radio experience. He served as Marconi operator on the U.S.S. Arizona, a steamer on the Great Lakes and in 1918 entered military service at Camp Pike, where he became an instructor in wireless and was commissioned a first lieutenant.

Returning to St. Louis at the close of the war, he and W.E. Wood formed the Benwood Company to deal in radio equipment. The store was located at Thirteenth and Olive streets and it was from there that Benson did his first broadcasting. In 1921 the store was moved to 1110 Olive street and the call letters of the Benson station were WEB. Four years later Benson moved his station to the Star building and was assigned the call letters WIL, which still identify his station, now one of the most popular in the city.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 6/11/32).

Aspiring radio performers will envy the natural ease with which Bob Holt broke into the game. Connected with a commercial organization whose radio program was suddenly minus one of its regular performers, he was put in on a moment’s notice. His characterization without rehearsal was so outstanding as to create immediate interest. He was offered a position as an announcer, and though previously he had no thought of entering radio, he accepted because of the new experiences it offered.

His voice, however, is an inheritance from his mother, who, as Jessie Nelson, was well known in St. Louis some years ago as an elocutionist and teacher of elocution.

Young Bob was educated for a religious career. He attended seminary in St. Louis and a year abroad. An interesting sidelight is Bob’s reason for giving up the ministry as a life’s work: an intense dislike for public speaking. Even now he avoids public notice and confines his oratory to the small, round metallic instrument known as the microphone. But he is sufficiently cured of this reserve to aspire beyond everything else to sing over the radio when he has completed vocal training.

Bob Holt is now a real radio fan. His favorite pastime is paddling a canoe, with a portable radio and his favorite programs for companions.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 6/11/32).

Much like the proverbial cat with nine lives, Buddy Blattner proved to St. Louisans several times that one man could be successful in many careers.

Robert G. Blattner, known to his fans as “Buddy” died September 4th  [2009] after suffering from lung cancer. He was 89. Although many remember him as the announcer for the St. Louis Hawks professional basketball team, Blattner excelled in many other areas before and after that part of his life.

At age 12, he would venture into John’s Pool Hall here in St. Louis where he honed his table tennis skills. It was reported the kids would put slabs of wood atop the pool tables to use them for table tennis. The pool hall on Natural Bridge may not have been the ideal spot for a youngster to hang out, but Blattner became a world champion at the craft while he was a student at Beaumont High School.

By graduation his prowess at baseball was also becoming apparent. He became a part of the Cardinals organization and moved up to the Majors in the 1942 season. He got to play in only 19 games, though, before he was drafted into the military, serving the Navy in the Pacific.  The Cardinals went on to win the World Series that year, prompting Buddy Blattner to quip, “The team said I sparked them to the pennant by going into the service.”

After the war at age 26, Blattner played 3 more seasons with the Giants and one with the Phillies, ending his career with a .247 average. Within a year he had transitioned to a different sort of baseball career.

He debuted in the broadcast booth of the St. Louis Browns in 1950, paired with another former Major Leaguer named Dizzy Dean. Blattner later acknowledged in an interview with SJR that his job was to be Dean’s straight man.

When the Browns moved to Baltimore after the 1952 season, Blattner and Dean moved their act to a national level with radio’s “Game of the Day” and television’s “Game of the Week.” And when the St. Louis Hawks pro basketball team came to St. Louis in 1955, Buddy Blattner became their radio voice.

From the booth in the rafters of the old Kiel Auditorium, Blattner broadcast 800 games for the team, and owner Ben Kerner knew how lucky he was to have Buddy on board. In 1960, when Jack Buck was fired from the Cardinals’ TV broadcast booth, Blattner took his place. It was said the move was a reward to Kerner for switching his team’s beer sponsorship from Falstaff to Budweiser.

Fans of those halcyon basketball days in St. Louis fondly recall Buddy Blattner’s voice on the booming 50,000 watts of KMOX. His familiarity with those who followed basketball was typified in his trademark phrase after a foul was called, when he would tell listeners, “They’re walking the right way,” or “They’re walking the wrong way,” depending on which team had committed the foul.

In 1959, Blattner asked to be removed from his national baseball broadcasting contracts, and after he left the Hawks, he did baseball announcing for the California Angeles and, later, the Kansas City Royals. He was founder of The Buddy Fund in 1961, a St. Louis organization that still provides sports equipment to the area’s underprivileged kids. He retired from broadcasting in 1975.

Never one to sit idle, Blattner then excelled at tennis in the Senior Olympics, earning a large collection of medals for his effort.

Perhaps one of the most valued assessments of Buddy Blattner’s work came from Jack Buck, the man whom he briefly replaced in the Cardinals’ TV booth. Without mincing words, Buck said Buddy Blattner was the greatest basketball broadcaster ever.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 10/2009).