If you have a chance to tour a radio station today, the odds are pretty good the studio will be part of what might be called a radio “assembly line,” thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Since huge corporate owners now cluster multiple radio stations in single locations, it’s common to see hallways lined on either side by different radio stations, as many as seven stations in a building. Throughout the history of radio, though, there have been some very interesting single studio locations in the St. Louis area.
Hotels have been the most popular location for local radio studios. KFVE was in the Missouri Hotel at 11th and Locust in the ‘20s and then relocated to the 3rd floor of the Chase Hotel in 1927. KMOX started out as one of the first tenants of the new Mayfair Hotel in 1925. KSTL began broadcasting from the mezzanine level of the American Hotel at 7th and Market in 1948. KWIX-FM occupied the penthouse on the roof of the Ambassador Hotel, 707 North 6th in the ‘60s. KWK was on the 9th floor of the Chase Hotel in 1930. WTMV, which became WBBR and WAMV had studios in the landmark Broadview Hotel in East St. Louis. WIL moved through several hotels: the Arcade level of the Missouri Hotel; the 16th floor of the Melbourne at Lindell and Grand; the 9th floor of the Chase Hotel; and the Coronado, about three blocks west on Lindell. Even WSBF, owned by a downtown department store, spent a short period of time at the Warwick Hotel at 1428 Locust.
Private homes have also housed radio studios here. The market’s renowned public station, KDNA, broadcast from an old home at 4285 Olive in what was then Gaslight Square. KSHE began in the basement of its owner’s home in Crestwood at 1035 Westglen Drive. WEW once broadcast from the basement of a West County home at 1323 Autumn Wood Drive after fire destroyed their studios. The station is now in a house at 2740 Hampton. WRTH was in a prefabricated rural home near Wood River.
Some stations’ homes were in logical, if unorthodox sites. A gymnasium at 5539 Page was the site of KFQA, the Principia station. The first studios of KFUO were on the roof of a building of what was then Concordia Seminary on South Jefferson at Winnebago. WCK and later WSBF were located in Stix, Baer & Fuller department store, which owned the stations. WGNU began in trailers at the transmitter site near Granite City before moving to the 13th floor of a Central West End high rise. WMAY was in the Kingshighway Presbyterian Church near Cabanne because the church owned the station. WMRY was on the grounds of Our Lady of the Snows shrine. That station was owned by the religious oblates. When KFVE went on the air it was located in the Egyptian Building at 6830 Delmar in University City, which had been part of the complex built by magazine entrepreneur E. G. Lewis. The Globe-Democrat wrote in June of 1949: “The old Egyptian Building was enough to give anybody the shudders. It was a long, windowless affair and the interior was soberly decorated with choice replicas of the ancient art of the pyramids.”
Three stations shared quarters with local newspapers. KSD, the Post-Dispatch station, signed on at 12th and Olive in the newspaper’s office building. KXOK began life in the Star-Times building a couple blocks north on 12th. For a couple years starting in 1925, the St. Louis Star housed WIL on the top floor of its office building.
And there were a couple studio locations that were downright odd. WEW’s studios were once housed in the basement of the current Busch Stadium downtown. KFVE shared space with the Baldwin Piano Company at 1111 Olive. KMOX was temporarily housed in the old Anthony & Kuhn’s Brewery complex at 906 Sydney. WIBV had studios at the Green Mill Restaurant on West Main Street in Belleville. KXOK temporarily shared space with the Regional Justice Information Service in the West End. KDHX occupies an old bakery building in South St. Louis. KCFM temporarily broadcast from the top floor of Boatmen’s Bank at 324 North Broadway. Later KCFM relocated to a building that housed the owner’s music shop at 532 DeBaliviere. Then, after the station was sold, it was relocated to another bank building, Cass Federal Savings and Loan at Graham and Dunn Roads in Florissant. Other stations spent some time in the Missouri Bank Building, which had originally been the Post-Dispatch building at 12th and Olive: KATZ-AM and FM and WIL-AM and FM. KTRS put its studios in a commercial mall.
Perhaps the biggest irony in terms of facilities belongs to KWK. In the station’s infancy, owner Thomas Patrick Convey spent money to develop the transmitter site in Kirkwood, where he lived. He turned the land into a ‘country club’ for the station’s employees. Many years later, after the station had fallen on hard times, the studios were located for awhile in a shack at a junk yard in north St. Louis.
(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 4/03)
Opportunities for African Americans in radio and other media have always been extremely limited, but St. Louis’ black deejays and announcers have played a special part. They were some of the nation’s greatest and most illustrious personalities who provided the area with information and entertainment that led to both social and civic change.
During the ‘40s and ‘50s, African Americans preferred radio over other types of media, except black publications such as the Chicago Defender and the St. Louis American. Black-oriented radio stations provided African Americans with a daily diet of news and factual information essential to the survival of the community.
In the St. Louis metropolitan area, generations of African Americans endured a system of hatred, exclusion and bigotry. However, they used a variety of means to fight segregation and racism, and their primary source was radio. During this period, many whites felt profoundly threatened by increasing demands by African Americans for social equality and economic opportunity.
In addition to creating advocacy organizations such as the Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), blacks fought their own private battles through the newspapers and over the airways. Black radio had also been summoned by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.
The African-American pioneers of St. Louis radio were labeled “race” announcers, but to the black community, they were celebrities. The stations they worked for usually devoted only a short segment of their broadcast day to programs designed for the African-American listener or consumer. And the announcers were never paid as much as their white counterparts because the industry was owned and managed exclusively by whites.
The major St. Louis stations that offered programs directed to the “Negro Market” in the early days were: KATZ-AM 1600, which began broadcasting on January 3, 1955; KXLW 1320 AM, which went on the air January 1, 1947; KWK 1380 AM, which began programming to the black community in August, 1969; and KIRL 1460 AM, which went on the air in 1972.
Across the river, in the early ‘50s, there were WTMV 1490 AM, which later became WBBR, WAMV, and WESL.
The first black disc jockey in St. Louis was Wiley Price, who began his broadcasting career in 1945…Price played big band sounds and the jazz music of the day, and he refused to play most secular rhythm and blues music.
In 1947, Jesse “Spider” Burks was hired by KXLW and later moved to KSTL and KATZ. While at KXLW, he was one of the highest-paid African-American disc jockeys in the country.
In 1952, Gabriel, a musician, began broadcasting from a facility in Alton, Ill. He later moved on to KATZ and other stations in the bi-state area, and eventually became known as an authority on the evolution of the blues and Negro folk music.
During this early period of St. Louis radio, Amos “Panyo” Dotson established himself as one of the finest personalities ever to adorn the airways.
On the East Side at WTMV were “Little Ole Young Roscoe” McCrary, Robert “BQ” Burris and Yvonne Daniels, the daughter of singer Billie Daniels was the first African-American female announcer in the bi-state area.
Willie Mae “Gracy” Lowery was the first African-American female deejay on the Missouri side when she began her broadcasting career at KATZ and KXLW in 1960.
These pioneers led the way and opened the doors for others such as Lou “Fatha” Thimes, George “The G” Logan, E. Rodney Jones, Dave and Jerome Dixon, Doug “The Leprechaun” Eason, “Gentleman” Jim Gates, Rod “Jockenstein” King, Curtis “Boogie Man” Brown, Charles “Sweet Charlie” Smith, Albert “Scoop Sanders” Gay, Steve Byrd, Michael Tyrone Key, Donn Johnson, Bill Moore, Alvin John Waples, Buster Jones, Donnie Brooks, Gary “Star” Perks, Otis Thomas, Gary “Tony-Silky” Stittum, Edie “Bee” Boatner, Cheryl Winston, Leo Chears, Dorothy Shelly, Hank Spann, Shelly Pope, Shelly Stewart, Magnificent Montague, Denise Williams, Robin Boyce, Decatur Agnew, Bill Bailey, Jimmy Bishop, Gene Norman, Norman Bradley, Lee “Baby” Michaels, Mark Anthony, Bobby Knight, Bernie Hayes and many, many more.
Each station devoted a portion of its broadcast day to gospel and religious programming, and the personalities who led the way also played a significant role in the development of St. Louis black radio. In the early days, there were Leonard Morris, Wynnetta Lindsey, Columbus Gregory, Zella Jackson Price, Dean Strong, Ruby Summerville-Dickson and Steve Love. They were leaders who supported the genre with the finest presentations of the most popular artists and finest music in the field.
Circumstances for blacks in the radio industry have somewhat improved, because mainstream or white-programmed stations understand that reaching diverse communities has become increasingly important in today’s expanding marketplace. But equal opportunities and equal pay still do not exist in the industry.
Black men and women need to have leadership positions in order to create a medium that is truly free and democratic. Giving blacks equal power in media affects society in general. Perhaps someday, the playing field will become nearly level. Even then, we will need to thank and remember those pioneers who made so many sacrifices in the early years.
(Reprinted with permission of the author. Originally published in the St. Louis American 2/24/05.)
Ed Bench came back to St. Louis in 1948 after his military service and his timing was perfect. His strong engineering background made him a prime candidate for the job of chief engineer at KSTL. James Grove, the president of Grove Laboratories in St. Louis announced his new station in February of that year, and he hired Bench to build it. Studios would be in the American Hotel, but there was a problem at the outset with the union.
In Bench’s words, “We were in the broadcast part of it and they were in the wiring part of it and they said ‘We have to wire all this.’ So they came in and created such a jumbled mess. They had no idea what was needed in a broadcast station. So we let them finish the job and when they got done we disassembled it all and put it back together the correct way.”
KSTL’s studios consisted of an announcer’s booth and a large studio with a piano and room for small bands. Engineers sat in a separate control room and spun the records, but that wasn’t their only duty. “Back in those days you had to have an engineer with an F.C.C. first class license on duty constantly at the transmitter, and they had to log the readings from the transmitter every half hour.”
Bench stayed with KSTL until 1955, jumped to television for four years and then built KATZ, which was put on the air by St. Louis Broadcasting Company, owned by Bernice Schwartz in Chicago. “When we went on the air we were only a one kilowatt daytime operation. After we put in a directional antenna, we went to a day/night broadcast and increased the power to 10,000 watts.
“One day I got a call from my good friend Harry Eidelman. He asked me to come out and visit because he wanted to show me something. He had a blueprint and a little tin box, and he told me it was Multiplex, which he said allowed him to broadcast a second signal on an FM frequency. I went down to KATZ and resigned and went to work for Harry.”
The problem was that FM radio just wasn’t cutting it, and Eidelman’s little box, in Ed Bench’s eyes, could save the industry. The station could run its regular broadcast and put something else more profitable on the sideband frequency, like Muzak, which is what Eidelman ended up doing. The additional Muzak income helped the station survive.
Bench had helped his friend Eidelman apply for the KCFM frequency several years earlier. “When I went to work with him I talked him into moving the tower from Boatmen’s Bank downtown to the studio building at 532 DeBaliviere. We put a tower up right through the middle of the building. On May 13, 1960, the fire got us. And of course, it melted the steel tower legs inside the building and the tower fell into the parking lot.”
The one, the only, Ed Bench
The pair started rebuilding immediately, getting back on the air with reduced power in five days. Only one local radio station manager offered to help: Bob Hyland from KMOX. And with the rebuilding came experimentation. Bench designed schematics for a stereo FM transmitter at about the same time General Electric and Zenith were building their prototypes.
All three stations went stereo the same day, WSYR in Syracuse with the GE system, WEFM in Chicago with Zenith’s system and KCFM here in St. Louis with Ed Bench’s creation.
The Bench/Eidelman team worked well together, even when it meant climbing the DeBaliviere tower to tweak an antenna or sawing a hole in the door of a sealed transmitter to prevent electrical arcing. “Harry was always coming up with ideas. If I couldn’t solve the problem, Harry would eventually have a solution. He’s a real brilliant man.”
After Eidelman sold KCFM, Bench stayed at DeBaliviere working for KSD-FM and then KMJM, retiring December 31, 1992.
She was, literally, the first lady of St. Louis radio. Virginia Jones wore many hats at KSD, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch station, and her deep voice caused some early confusion among the station’s listeners in those natal days of the industry in 1922.
V.A.L. Jones, whose given name was Virginia Adele Laurence Jones, was KSD’s first announcer, program director and scriptwriter. She was there when the station officially signed on with a gala broadcast on June 26, 1922. It was Miss Jones’ job to decide on which talent to use during the stations daily broadcasts, coach them on the proper technique for using the primitive microphones and ease their nervousness, rehearse them with scripts she had written, and act as the station announcer once the broadcasts began.
In radio’s earliest days it was not considered proper for announcers to identify themselves by name, but gender confusion caused by her deep voice led her to be identified as “Miss Jones” to all heard her. It was a time when a national publication, “Radio Broadcast” was running an article entitles “Is Woman Desirable—Over Radio?” She was quoted in a St. Louis Globe-Democrat article in 1960 as saying, “I think I probably did everything, including sweeping out the studio.” Still, she was a mystery, because the spotlight in all external station publicity was placed on the performers and lecturers being featured in upcoming broadcasts.
V.A.L. Jones had worked as a feature writer and society editor for the St. Louis Republic writing under the name “Serena Lamb.” She worked at the rewrite desk of the Post-Dispatch, was a respected musician, and she had been publicity director for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Association. During the five years she worked at KSD, Miss Jones also ran a business of her own providing public relations for St. Louis charity clients.
The radio business was also where she met her future husband, and in 1927, she quit to marry KMOX engineer Archibald Campbell. He was soon transferred to Kansas City, but she returned to St. Louis after the marriage ended.
It was her knowledge of music and of happenings in the city that led to her appointment at KSD. “Radio Broadcast” magazine wrote in 1924, “Miss V.A.L. Jones, of station KSD, St. Louis, judging from the letters received commending her announcing, is not only in the lead among the women filling this position at broadcasting stations, but ahead of most of the men as well.” She was quite well-liked, even to the extent that she received “flirtatious” correspondence from a number of men.
Val Jones, as she was known to her friends, worked long hours for the city’s first commercial radio station. An article in the September 1923 issue of “Radio in the Home” noted, “Once a week she holds hearings of from fifty to sixty aspirants at which the well-known and the unknown performers alike must go through their paces. At these hearings Miss Jones is sole auditor, judge and court of last resort.” She considered this auditioning, in which she had to turn down aspiring radio performers, the most unpleasant of her tasks.
Miss Jones was a tireless worker in the new medium called radio, often staying on the air for long shifts. On Christmas Eve, 1922, she reportedly stayed on air for a twenty-four hour period, and her regular shift usually ran into the early hours of the morning. While her published obituaries disagreed on her age, she was about 40 when KSD signed on. Following her return from Kansas City, she devoted her time to compiling St. Louis’ social register, but she often said the book was of no real importance. “The only thing it is good for,” she proclaimed, “is to keep snobs who aren’t in busy. It keeps them out of trouble trying to get in.”
V.A.L. Jones Campbell died in 1962 following illness.
(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 10/1999)
KSD, Miss Jones Announcing By Marguerite Martyn
“This is Station KSD, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch—-”
A legion of you listeners-in are familiar with the voice that utters these words. You recognize it among the voices of other radio announcers for its clearness of enunciation, for the purity of diction it employs, possibly for a slightly Southern accent, for the conciseness of its announcements and introductions and for another quality, of friendliness without familiarity.
You have come to recognize the conduct of the evening programs from this station for the freedom from irrelevancies, by-play and side remarks which some other program conductors, contrary to the Government regulations, indulge in or inject into their programs.
Many of you, no doubt, have endeavored to visualize the personality behind this voice, and there is evidence in most of the letters received at KSD that the voice does project the personality accurately. Many thousands of these letters are cherished by the recipient as mementoes of congenial, though distant contacts.
Especially do the letters from nice old ladies and from children bespeak a correct estimate of the personality. But radio orphans who send in boxes of cigars as thank offerings (sic) and others who address the announcer as “Girlie” and seek to strike up a flirtation must needs be told that they are wrong, all wrong, in their conception.
Probably the first false conclusion is due to the fact that there are relatively few women announcers or because it is hard to associate a voice of just such timber with feminine ownership.
For that reason, some time ago, the custom of signing off with “Miss Jones announcing” was adopted. Even since, there are those who refuse to be convinced, possibly because the name “Jones” sounds like a thin disguise.
How the flirtatious ones make their mistake is not so easily explained unless they are just of the incorrigibly irrepressible type, for certainly the announcer does nothing to encourage such presumption.
To correct a few misapprehensions and simplify many mental pictures the voice has conjured up, the editor of Radio in the Home has asked a coworker on the staff of the Post-Dispatch to introduce in person Miss Virginia Adele Laurence Jones. She is better known in St. Louis as Miss Val Jones.
First, what does she look like?
Well, she has red hair. I do not know that a certain temperament invariably accompanies red hair. If so, let me explain, it is a rare shade. Not light, nor yet dark, but a certain suffused copper, a great mass of it, spun very fine, always immaculately dressed in precisely the same manner, fluffy around the smooth brow and flatly coiled at the crown of the head.
Fair skin, the usual complement of auburn tresses, and blue eyes complete the color scheme.
Nose glasses worn constantly add a touch of dignity already conveyed by erect carriage and meticulously careful dress. Let a ready laugh, warm, though never impulsive, responsiveness, firmness without stiffness complete your picture of a young woman of poise and reserve, graciousness and warmth. Virginian nativity accounts for the Southern accent.
Many of you who have listened to KSD programs, in their infinite variety, when told they procured and arranged entirely by Miss Jones, cannot but be impressed with the resourcefulness, knowledge, tact embodied in one person. It requires tact you must acknowledge to maneuver a Clemenceau, a President of the United States, a prima donna (sic), into just the right position before a broadcasting microphone. It requires still more tact, sometimes, you may well imagine, to keep ambitious but inadequate performers off the program.
This Miss Jones regards as the least pleasant, but most necessary, of her duties. Once a week she holds hearings of from fifty to sixty aspirants at which the well-known and the unknown performers alike must go through their paces. At these hearings Miss Jones is the sole auditor, judge and court of last resort.
Some of our best offerings are lacking in the essential qualities for radio transmission. But this fact proves a convenient refuge for the severe critic who would at the same time be kind and tactful.
I am sure, too, you must have been impressed with the broad knowledge of affairs indicated by the intelligent introduction of speakers on a wide range of subjects and the technical knowledge evidenced in the selection and introduction of musical numbers.
The first faculty may be due in some measure to the fact that before becoming our announcer Miss Jones had been one of the most capable newspaper workers and editors in this city. For several years she was feature writer and society editor of the now defunct St. Louis Republic, gaining wide popularity under the nom de plume “Serena Lamb.”
The second is due to the fact that she is a trained musician herself, and to experience and prestige gained through long association with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Association as publicity director.
And those of you who have listened to her announcements night after night since the inauguration of this broadcasting station a year ago and observed how her hours of duty extend at times from evening to morning and, as upon Christmas Day, from one midnight to the next, must have marveled at her devotion, efficiency and capacity for work.
The first quality is due to you listeners-in. She never fails you, because she has grown to know, from your many letters of response, of your appreciation and expectancy.
Of the second quality, her capacity for work, you do not know the half unless you know that besides the hours of duty at KSD, regular hours are devoted to a business of her own, a publicity office in which she undertakes such large contracts as the Veiled Prophet Ball, St. Louis’ great annual social and civic celebration; the tuberculosis ball game, the largest local charity event, and other important yearly contracts.
The thing her co-workers marvel at is the ease with which she dismisses her many tasks; though not to be marveled at so much when it is considered that she brings to her work superior equipment, not only of natural endowment, but of training and experience. She is a graduate of Leland Stanford Junior University and, as I have said, is broadly experienced in that most broadening work, newspaper reporting and editing.
During the war she was made executive chairman of the women’s auxiliary of St. Louis’ pet regiment, the 138th Infantry. So whole-heartedly did she devote herself to this job and so almost single-handedly did she engineer all the hometown activities on behalf of the boys at the front that she became known as the “Sister of the Regiment” besides establishing in the minds of the people an almost unapproachable reputation for public-spiritedness and patriotism.
No wonder when the Post-Dispatch sought an announcer for its broadcasting station it turned to Miss V.A.L. Jones. The wonder is that through all this vast contact and applause a woman’s head has not been turned. The wonder is she still retains that attitude of absolute impersonality, detachment, faithfulness to the task at hand.
Many an individual would have been tempted to capitalize to selfish ends the advertisement that has come to her. But such an idea is farthest from her thoughts. She appears to regard her services as a public trust. Jealously she guards her listeners-in from every selfish encroachment.
“I appreciate the many letters of appreciation that come addressed to me as the only tangible personification of KSD and accept them with what grace I may on behalf of the radio staff and the owner of the paper which is providing this service,” declares Miss Jones. “But the letters from which I get my real personal satisfaction are those which tell me that my voice is distinctly heard.
“To have it said that I am a good announcer, that my announcements and introductions are clear, concise and complete, that is all I ask of myself in relation to our nation-wide audience.”
(Originally published in Radio In the Home 9/1923.)
Score One For Women Announcers By Jennie Irene Mix
There is more to be added to the discussion that has been going on in these columns regarding women announcers. Miss V.A.L. Jones, of station KSD, St. Louis, judging from the letters received commending her announcing, is not only in the lead among women filling this position at broadcasting stations, but ahead of most of the men as well. And ahead of all the men, according to Mr. J.C. Porter of Amargura, 23, Havana, Cuba. It is a pleasure to print the following excerpts from his letter.
“The object of this letter is to pay a well-deserved compliment to KSD’s announcer, Miss Jones. There is much telegraphic interference here as well as the steady grinding static that prevails most of the year, and it requires an exceptional voice to cut through this mess and be intelligible. This, Miss Jones does. I can say as the result of more than a year’s experience that there is not a voice coming from the States that we receive better than hers.
“In this day, when Radio Broadcasting is running a series of articles under the heading ‘Is Woman Desirable – Over Radio?,’ I feel that such a very fine radio voice as that of Miss Jones deserves a word of appreciation…We are a family of ‘radio nuts’…have six sets, and get the latest thing on the market. There is at least one set going every night, the year round, and this letter in praise of Miss Jones is the combined opinion of our family, based on a full three years of dial twisting…Here’s hoping that for many seasons to come we may enjoy the clear, measured, and cultured voice of the best announcer that we hear from the States.”
A charming and intelligent tribute. May it influence some of the patronizing announcers to mend their ways. In particular, that one in Chicago who, although he has some excellent points, spoils everything he does when, after saying they are signing off but will be on the air again in an hour, calls out with aggravating cheerfulness: “See you later!”
(Originally published in Radio Broadcast, 12/1924)
Although no one today has even heard of him, Chester J. Gruber was one of the biggest radio stars ever in St. Louis. But few people knew him by his given name when he hit the height of his popularity in the early 1930s. To his listeners, Chester was known as Tony Cabooch.
His act was like nothing else on the airwaves. Chess was 39 years old when his program on KMOX was picked up by CBS and broadcast over the entire radio network. The year was 1930, and hometown corporation Anheuser-Busch heard that another company was courting Gruber for a program based in New York. Gruber told an interviewer he received a telegram while on a train headed to New York. Quoting a St. Louis Globe-Democrat account: “It was from Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis. They told him to sign no contracts until he had seen them. The result was Tony’s return here and his contract for $500 a week for 26 weeks.”
The Anheuser-Busch Antics went on CBS in May of 1930, with the first program introduced by St. Louis Mayor Victor Miller. It was the first regularly scheduled network show to originate in St. Louis. And Chester Gruber was the star, providing the voices of at least 15 different characters, including Singhi the Chinaman, Casey the Irishman, Sam Green the cotton field worker, Abe Cohen, Vittor (Tony’s brother), Lena the parrot, Reginald Tweed from England, Ole Olson from Sweden, Haba Daba the tribesman, and Alvin Larsen the sailor.
Gruber’s dialects would surely have made him the target of the political correctness police today, but in the days following Vaudeville, his entertainment represented the transfer of America’s interest from local theaters to radios in the parlor. Prior to his KMOX debut, Gruber had spent 12 years on the stage, refining his acting dialects. His popularity was such that, in his first 14 weeks on KMOX (before the network show) he received 42,000 fan letters.
Chester Gruber (a.k.a. Tony Cabooch)
And the name Tony Cabooch was something Gruber grabbed while dining in one of the city’s many restaurants. Again from an article in the Globe, “He heard a waiter cry out to the chef, ‘Corn a bif a cabooch.’ Which translated meant ‘An order of corn beef and cabbage.’ The phrase stuck in Gruber’s memory, and when it came time for Tony to appear his last name was Cabooch.”
Gruber described Tony as “just a downtrodden wop who hasn’t got a cent, but he wants to help everyone on earth. He is funny and always human.” In Tony’s own dialectic words “I’m all a time goan work a hard for pleez a you an’ eff I’m can make a you laugh joost a leetle bits, den dat makes a me feel happy an’ I’m hope a you was forget a you trouble.”
No records have been found to indicate how long the show ran on KMOX and CBS. The local program had been heard Wednesday and Friday evenings at 6:45, sponsored by F.C. Taylor Fur Company. The twice-weekly broadcasts continued at the network level Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 9:00.
(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 02/2000)
In the earliest days of radio in St. Louis, a young promoter from Chicago hit St. Louis and proceeded to make his mark building radio stations. Thomas Patrick Convey first came to St. Louis in 1916 to stage a housewares show at the Coliseum. He returned in 1925 to stage a radio exposition, which was common in the United States at that time. The event brought together manufacturers to show their latest products to the general public.
Legend has it that Convey was inspired to stage such an exposition after his son begged him to fix a broken radio receiver at their home in Des Plaines, outside of Chicago. Convey supposedly was so taken by the reception of his radio exposition here that he uprooted his family and set out to get involved in the local broadcasting industry.
In the words of one obituary, “He interested St. Louis men in his idea and in three months had secured $250,000. Thus KMOX came into being.” He was manager of KMOX for about a year until he had a falling out with some of the investors. Out of work and with no money, he set out to buy another station. Pawning a watch that had been given to him by his previous clients – the radio manufacturers – Convey put earnest money down on KFVE, a station based in University City that was off the air.
The station was given the new call letters KWK and signed on the air on March 19, 1927. In its first year of broadcasting KWK had a gross income of under $10,000, which meant Convey had to handle as many jobs as possible at the station and bring in family members to help. Son Robert went on the air as “Bob Thomas,” the elder Convey was “Thomas Patrick,” daughter Charlotte was ukulele player “Juanita,” and his wife Grace also took her turn at the microphone. Convey set up the studios on the ninth floor of the Chase Hotel and traded advertising time for rent.
Thomas Patrick Convey
Thomas Patrick, as he was known to his listeners, was an operator in the truest sense of the word. When WIL petitioned the Federal Radio Commission to take over KWK’s frequency, Convey took to the airwaves to enlist his listeners in the battle. Day and night he pleaded with them to send letters, sign petitions and organize mass meetings to fight WIL. His radio exhortations would run the gamut from sobbing pleas to ranting and wailing. It was a battle he would eventually win.
Convey was also involved in a bitter lawsuit against his former radio station, KMOX. During a news event at which both stations were broadcasting, a KMOX employee (Graham Tevis) cut one of Convey’s cables, knocking KWK off the air. Convey had the man arrested, and the KMOX worker sued him for $75,000 in damages. Convey counter-sued for $100,000. The eventual out-of-court settlement involved no cash, but Convey was granted equal broadcast rights for the next season’s baseball games.
It was his play-by-play work that his fans remembered most. Convey was a fixture at local ballparks for several years. Another obituary noted, “Convey was a human dynamo of energy, impulsive, tenacious when he was sure he was right, and uncompromising in a fight.” His final fight was one he couldn’t win. He was at his home in Kirkwood at the site of the KWK transmission tower when his appendix burst. By the time he arrived at Dr. L.B. Tiemon’s hospital in Pine Lawn, blood poisoning had begun to set in. A week later he was dead at the age of 47.
(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 11/1998)
Tom Convey – St. Louis Promoter and Radio Pioneer
Thomas Patrick Convey couldn’t possibly have known it at the time, but when he moved to St. Louis, he began a career that would keep the Convey name in St. Louis radio for decades. The road, however, was often a rocky one.
Legend has it that Convey, a Chicago promoter, traveled to St. Louis to stage a radio exposition bringing together radio manufacturers from around the country to show their wares. He later told a reporter that he was so taken by the public reaction to the expo that he uprooted his family and relocated. He then set out to find a job in St. Louis radio.
Convey was instrumental in organizing a group of St. Louis’ biggest business names as investors in a super radio station. KMOX, under the ownership of their partnership, signed on in December of 1925, with Thomas Patrick Convey as their manager. By August of the following year, there was a falling out, and Convey was let go. He had no money.
Pawning a watch and a diamond ring that had been given to him by the radio manufacturers in appreciation for the successful expo, Convey rounded up $500 and bought a station that had been dark for several months. KFVE was based in suburban University City. He was quoted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch later as saying, “I started a broadcasting station literally without a dime.” New calls, KWK, were eventually assigned, and the studios were moved to a prestigious location, the ninth floor of St. Louis’ Chase Hotel, on March 17, 1927, a place it would call home for 22 years. At this point KWK truly became the Convey radio station.
A REAL MOM & POP STATION In addition to the adoption of his air persona “Thomas Patrick,” Convey enlisted the other members of his family to do on-air chores. Son Robert became “Bob Thomas,” daughter Charlotte became ukulele player “Juanita,” and wife Grace also took an occasional turn at the microphone under the air name “Peggy Austin.” She was listed as the station’s program director.
Several times, Convey demonstrated the ability to get his way with the Federal Radio Commission. When the FRC juggled frequency assignments and forced St. Louis’ WIL and KWK onto the same frequency, Convey made frequent on-air pleas for help from his listeners.
The Washington Post reported 1,900 St. Louisans donated a total of $3,000 to send a forty-person delegation to Washington to protest to the Commission. Signs were posted in yards all over St. Louis: “Hands off KWK.” It worked. Within three weeks, WIL was assigned a different frequency so the two stations no longer had to alternate broadcast days.
To celebrate KWK’s first anniversary the station leased the Odeon Theater on March 17, 1928 for a special stage show. A year later in celebration of the station’s second anniversary, a huge production was staged at the city’s largest building, the Coliseum. The program featured 36 acts, 24 of which were performed by the station’s entertainment staff. A reported 18,000 people attended.
In 1929, Convey ran an ad for KWK in the city’s Chamber of Commerce newsletter in which he extended a unique invitation: “You are invited to visit our studios and offices on the ninth floor of the Hotel Chase, where every facility has been provided for the expert handling of radio programs. Our staff of twenty-one people is especially trained in radio broadcasting.” The station had come a long way from the early days when the staff consisted almost entirely of Convey family members.
FEISTY COMPETITOR IN THE MARKET Never one to take a back seat to the competition, Convey decided to provide his listeners with live coverage of a major aviation story in spite of the fact that his former employer (KMOX) had negotiated exclusive broadcasting rights. Things got tense on the scene of the event at St. Louis’ Lambert Aviation Field, and as the arguing heated up, a KMOX engineer cut KWK’s microphone wires during the broadcast.
The resulting lawsuits were settled out of court, with KWK getting shared broadcast rights to the next year’s St. Louis baseball games.
In another 1929 confrontation with a station employee who was moonlighting at a nightclub, Convey ended up in front of a police magistrate. Prohibition was still a way of life, and when asked in court if he had been drinking the night of the incident, Convey replied, “Well, I wouldn’t consider it drinking. I had a bad cold and was taking spiritus frumenti prescribed by my doctor. I think it was in a pint bottle, but I don’t know because I’m not used to carrying bottles.”
Convey made the most of his baseball broadcast rights, encouraging the ladies in the audience to come to the ballpark and enjoy the special Ladies’ Day promotion. An example: In the era immediately following the stock market crash, women were admitted to the ballpark for a 25-cent service charge.
A few years later the Cardinals banned radio broadcasts in the belief they were hurting attendance, so Convey sat atop the North Side YMCA across the street from Sportsman’s Park and, with the help of a good pair of binoculars, related what was happening to the home team.
The experienced promoter continued to take advantage of opportunities to pump his station. In January of 1930, a scant three months after the stock market crash, Convey announced the addition of 10,000 square feet of studio and office space, along with “a complete line of new furniture … in keeping with the futuristic decorations which have been included in the improvements.”
TECHNICAL IMPROVEMENTS Convey was also working diligently at improving KWK’s signal strength, tweaking the FRC with on-the-air diatribes at every opportunity: “With each application for an extension of the license – you know the law requires this be done every three months – we make the request that station KWK be granted increased power. So far our pleas have been unheeded, but if we are given permission one of these days we will … give St. Louis the best we can possibly give in high-grade radio features.”
The St. Louis Star reported Convey sent petitions to the Federal Radio Commission containing over 96,000 signatures in support of the power increase. Those major expansion plans were finally announced in November of 1930 when KWK arranged to take over the original transmitter site of KMOX in suburban Kirkwood.
They also bought a 5,000 watt transmitter, Convey stating the entire acquisition exceeded $100,000 in value (although only $30,000 actually changed hands). It was a purchase signaling a step toward the good life Convey had envisioned for his family, but it also contributed to his early demise.
A STAFF PARK The suburban transmitter site gave the Conveys a new home in a relatively rural area. Ever the promoter, Thomas Patrick Convey announced in 1931 that he was converting the grounds around the towers and his home into a country club for his station’s employees. But that was not all – the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported: “Two large, modern soundproof broadcasting studios will be constructed on the present site of the broadcasting plant of station KWK.
“According to Convey, the new studios are being erected to accommodate the artists at times when the weather conditions are such that cooling breezes would be particularly desirable and to provide fresh air to all who wish to ride out to the Kirkwood plant … [he] contemplates improving the four-acre tract, to be turned over to the employees of KWK as a recreational center … with a swimming pool, regulation tennis courts and a summer playground for the children of the employees.”
Late one Sunday night in May of 1934, Thomas Patrick Convey suffered a burst appendix while at his home on the KWK Country Club grounds. Unfortunately, the residence was so far removed from the closest hospital that he was mortally ill by the time a doctor was able to begin care.
Convey died five days later at Dr. L. B. Tiernon’s hospital in suburban Pine Lawn after peritonitis set in; he was just 49 years old. In the obituary that ran in the Post-Dispatch, Thomas Patrick Convey was described as “a human dynamo of energy, impulsive, tenacious when he was sure he was right and uncompromising in a fight.”
His son Robert T. (Bob) Convey immediately took over the job of managing KWK. Only 21 at the time, he continued as the manager, expanding KWK into a large operation employing 75 people, until the family sold the station for over $1 million in 1958.
Although his radio career only lasted about ten years, Thomas Patrick Convey made his mark on St. Louis. The stations he set up are still there; KMOX is a Midwest “powerhouse,” now owned by Infinity. KWK went through some major crises over its life; it went dark twice, had its license revoked once, and was rescued from bankruptcy by Doubleday Broadcasting. Today, the station continues to exist as KSLG, 5,000 watts at 1380 kHz.
Few St. Louis radio listeners today have ever heard of Thomas Patrick Convey, but it was his enterprising spirit that left a legacy of a station deeply committed to St. Louis, speaking to and with the community it served.
(Reprinted with permission of Radio Guide. Originally published 1/2005)
