Radio Articles

Ed Wilson was big in St. Louis radio for a number of years. And he was very big in person too, tipping 300 pounds at several points in his life.

When he joined KWK radio May 25, 1942, the country was involved in a far-away war. He had been heard previously over one of the NBC networks broadcasting from WLS in Chicago. His friendly, folksy patter kept his listeners in the St. Louis area company as he broadcast from the KWK studios in the Chase Hotel. Spinning records was always an integral part of his radio shows, but Wilson’s signature trait was his ability to talk with his listeners, just as though they were sitting across the kitchen table from him. Under the ownership of the Convey family, KWK had long been a radio staple in the market, providing a variety of entertainment. Wilson’s personal approach was a perfect fit.

And in the pre-rock-and-roll days, his popular music had its share of young listeners, as well as housewives. In 1957, that appeal to youth was instrumental in his being hired as the first host of KSD-TV’s “St. Louis Hop.” His TV career was short-lived, but it was a stepping stone to his next radio gig, KSD, which he joined in August of 1958.

And then something happened. Ed Wilson was bitten by the wandering bug. It’s not known why he came to the conclusion he did, but Wilson decided it was time to make his move in 1960 to head for Hollywood. He and KSD reached an agreement whereby Ed would record his program in California and put the tapes on a plane, assuring St. Louis delivery in time to be aired the following day. It was an arrangement that was bound to fail, and when it did, Ed Wilson’s voice left the St. Louis airwaves.

As Globe-Democrat TV-Radio editor Pete Rahn wrote, “Personally, I’m sorry to hear that the familiar voice of Ed Wilson will no longer be coming into our homes and autos…Like him or not, you must agree that Wilson’s shows were always high class. Pleasant music and chatter. Maybe a bit old hat at times, but always clean.”

Within a couple years the Wilson family was back in St. Louis, the California effort having failed. He joined WIL in 1962, quitting two years later when management changed, making a move to WEW. After six years there he returned to WIL, a job he held until his death from a heart attack in February of 1975.

In his nearly 30 years in St. Louis radio, Ed Wilson wisely cultivated a lucrative side income stream doing voiceover work for commercials. He also tried his hand at early syndication of radio features, but the reality was that Ed was appreciated for what he did in St. Louis radio and never caught on outside of the market.

At one point while at KWK, he received over 16,000 listener letters in one week. His local programs produced direct results for his advertisers, and in the business of radio, that is what really mattered.

About three years ago, Roy Queen, the Lone Singer, decided that he wasn’t quite satisfied with life in Ironton, Missouri and wanted things to happen. He took a couple of bicycle tires and traded them for a 22 rifle but found that wasn’t quite what he wanted.

Then he traded the rifle for a guitar and his young career began to bud. Of course he didn’t know one string from another nor did he know how to tune it but he did have courage and that of his convictions. He walked three miles to a neighbor’s house through the snow to get him to tune the instrument and then trudged merrily home.

Unfortunately, on the route home, the guitar got out of tune and he was no further along than before. But he set to work to master it and basing his inspiration on his knowledge learned from his mother’s playing an organ when he was a youngster, he learned to play. He learned to sing the songs that his mother had taught him and then he came to KMOX for an audition.

His singing of the plaintive Western laments and hillbilly songs was so effective that he was immediately given a job and he has been there since March 1930. He is now heard on the Early Morning Farm Folks Hour and the weekly County Fair.

Roy has black, curly hair, regular features and is about five feet six inches in height. He is very quiet and apparently unconscious of the fact that he is the object of devotion of feminine admirers. He is twenty years old. His fan mail comes from all over the United States and requests for his favorite song “I Can’t Give Up My Rough and Rowdy Ways” pour in every day. That is the song that he sang for his first audition and that is the primary reason for his preferring it.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 4/1/1933).

Many people tend to think that radio’s “golden age” ended in the 1940s, but one local media veteran has memories of that golden time extending into the ‘50s in St. Louis.

In 1950, the KMOX studios in the Mart Building were the site of a veritable beehive of activity. Ollie Raymand was there, newly hired as a staff announcer. “At that time,” he says, “St. Louis was the network’s third-most-active radio production center.”

That meant that the multiple radio studios in the massive downtown building were kept busy, often with two programs being broadcast live at the same time – one to St. Louis and another to the CBS affiliates around the country.

“We started in the morning at 7:30 feeding the Ozark Varieties Program around  the country,” says Raymand. “We’d occasionally feed our noon news to the network. There was the Housewives Protective League. From 3:00 to 4:00 we produced Matinee.

“That featured our 26-piece KMOX orchestra. Curt Ray and I were emcees. Jack Hill was our male singer. The female singers were Dottye Bennett and Fredna Parker.”

The high cost of Matinee led to its demise after about nine months. But KMOX still fed a lot of nighttime material to the nation. Big band remote feeds often featured Stan Daugherty and the KMOX musicians, and other bands could be heard appearing at the Jefferson Hotel and the Chase Hotel.

Saturday at the Chase was, as the name indicated, a remote from the famed hotel’s Starlight Room. The program featured whatever big-name talent might be appearing at the hotel at the time or, occasionally, stars from the Muny Opera.
Jazz Central originated from the Ambassador Hotel. Raymand says with that much activity going on, the job was full of surprises.

“One time an orchestra leader whose band was scheduled to go live on the network in a few hours became, shall we say, indisposed. I got a call from the manager of the Sheraton Jefferson Hotel. He knew I played trumpet, and he called and asked me to come in and take over the band. I’d never played with them and, of course, didn’t know their arrangements, but I did it and went on to finish out the final two weeks of the band’s engagement there.”

The KMOX production facility and offices occupied over 40,000 square feet of Mart Building space. In addition to talent, the programs required a staff of writers, since nothing in those days was ad-libbed. Engineers were needed to operate all the equipment, and there was a large news operation.

Raymand captured the atmosphere of the place when he said, “I used to love the job because it was so exciting. We’d rehearse and go through the script. You could work directly with the writers to make changes so the phrases were more natural for the way you spoke. It was totally different from what radio people have today.”

CBS had built the KMOX Mart Building studio complex at the height of the Depression, pumping much-needed money into the local economy. But the death of network radio’s Golden Age was looming in the ‘50s. That, along with a notice to vacate from the building’s owner, who needed the space for a larger tenant, forced KMOX to relocate to smaller quarters in 1957.

The programming changed too, and St. Louis’ position as a CBS Radio production center soon evaporated.

In 1938, radio was soaring in popularity. But when St. Louis radio station managers were asked to predict radio’s future in 1938, they got it all wrong.

The nation was on the tail end of the Depression, and 82 percent of households had radios. Television was still being developed. Radio’s programming was part of what is now called its “Golden Age.”

Here in St. Louis in September of 1938, KMOX put local station owners and managers on the air in a roundtable discussion to talk about the business.

Merle Jones of KMOX was quick to note just how much radio contributed to the local economy. Just ten years prior, he noted, the city’s largest station employed 20 people. Ten years later the situation had changed dramatically. The smallest station employed 35 full-time workers and the largest had 120 full-timers and another 50-75 air staff members on call. That station, KMOX, had an annual payroll then of over $400,000.

Local stations were also making a mark nationally. Hundreds of local programs were being run over the four major radio networks, which was seen as a way of promoting St. Louis as a progressive city.

So things were going well. But when they were asked about radio’s future, none could foresee the coming world war and the part Edward R. Murrow and his peers would play in making radio a necessity in every home in the nation. Instead, they focused on a new technical development, radio facsimile.

George Burbach of KSD said his station was ready to begin testing the new system of news delivery within the next 30 days. The system involved using radio waves to sent special facsimile versions of the Post-Dispatch into the homes of subscribers.

Initially, Burbach said, testing would be limited to a few receivers in the city and county. The special radio receiver contained a clock but no frequency dial. Owners would set the clock to turn on the machine at a certain time in the very early morning hours, and the news would begin printing out. It was a slow process, requiring several minutes per page, but radio people and Post management were excited about the possibilities.

For the paper, it meant readers would receive their copy in the morning, which would compete with the Globe-Democrat. For radio stations, it meant respectability that up to that point had been called into question.

That’s because the so-called “Press-Radio War,” which pitted newspapers against radio stations, had shut radio out of many aspects of the news delivery business. Newspaper owners had successfully banned broadcasters from the Congressional press galleries and had forbidden the Associated Press from selling its service to radio stations.

If radio could provide a printed news summary, it could get around many restrictions.

William West, then-manager of WTMV, said his station had already applied for a facsimile license and was planning to apply for a license for television as soon as possible.

Facsimile news officially began in St. Louis December 7, 1938. It that world premier, 15 homes received a special, abbreviated edition of the day’s Post-Dispatch, with the transmission beginning at 2:00 a.m. and usually taking around two hours to complete.

But the “wow factor” of facsimile was limited, and the system never really caught on. The “experiment” died after two years. By that time, all ears were focused on the live reports from Europe, describing a developing war. The U.S. didn’t want to be a part of it, but many citizens still had relatives living in Europe, and live reports on radio trumped newspaper reports. In 1941, 13 million radio receivers were sold in the U.S.

After Pearl Harbor, all technical development in broadcasting was halted, and radio became an even stronger medium in the dissemination of news.

“The more I did it, the more I liked it.”

That’s how Lou “Fatha” Thimes describes his entry into radio.
The beginning was inauspicious. Thimes was sitting in the barracks at Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa when the captain came in looking for a volunteer disc jockey to play black music on the base radio station. Things went well on the air, and the experience paid off when he returned to civilian life in St. Louis.

He started out playing gospel music on Saturdays at KATZ in 1958. “I guess I had a good enough voice,” he says, “because soon they took me off the gospel show and had me playing rhythm and blues.”

The setup of the studios back then was very different from what most people may have envisioned. The announcer sat at a table with a microphone on it. In another room, behind soundproof glass, an engineer took care of the technical work, playing the records and commercials and keeping audio at the proper level.

And it was up to each disc jockey to pick his own music. “That was before owners decided they could choose music.”

During the week, the other jocks on the air were Dave Dixon, Robert BQ and Doug Eason. They also played R&B and gospel.

Soon another local owner came calling. Richard Miller offered Fatha more money to jump to KXLW, the market’s other R&B station.

The KXLW studios, located on Bomparte Avenue at the station’s tower site, were smaller and the studio operation was different. The DJs had to operate their own control boards and the only engineer Thimes remembers was Jimmy Mitchell, whom he says was always tinkering with transmitter.

At first, working for a local owner was no different than working at a station whose owner lived in another city. “We were trying to beat KATZ, so Richard left us alone at that time. Later, he decided he knew music.”

Like most of his fellow deejays, Thimes had gigs on the side to make money. He pursued his comedy career with partner John Smith in a team known as “Lou and Blue,” in various clubs around town. This sideline gave him a perfect opportunity to cross paths with some well-known musicians, who would later end up as guests on his radio program – people like Dinah Washington, Louis Jordan and Otis Redding.

Other disc jockeys were also moonlighting. Dave Dixon and Roscoe McCrary would produce talent shows at the YMCA at Sarah and Page. They’d bring in people like Smokey Robinson and Gladys Knight.

KXLW also opened the door for announcers to pick up lucrative contracts.

“I remember when Anheuser Busch bought shows on KXLW to sell their beer.

“There was a gentleman at the brewery, Mr. Porter, who didn’t like blues. He almost killed some of those contracts. When he asked me what kind of music I played, I’d tell him it was requested music.

“A-B had salesmen on the street, and the disc jockeys would travel with the salesmen to different taverns and buy beer for people in the taverns. I couldn’t go anywhere without somebody yelling ‘Hey, Lou. Let’s have a beer!’”

Thimes says he was surprised when he found out white kids were listening to his show “A white kid called me one day and asked what I was doing working at that black radio station. They thought I was white!”

When the music changed and management began telling the announcers what they had to play, Thimes knew it was time to hang it up. “I only knew blues and that’s all I wanted to do.

“I would like to do another blues show on the radio but nobody’s playing that music on the air. How can you not play the blues?”

Diminutive Ruth Hulse Nelson who is regularly heard over KMOX, the Voice of St. Louis, in piano and organ recitals, is one of the most accomplished organists in the middle west, and began the study of music at the age of three. When but seven she composed her first song, “Dream of Night” and featured it on Chautauqua programs. Since then Ruth has constantly been in touch with the musical world. In 1924 she won a scholarship and studied under the excellent tutelage of Silvio Scionti. Through friends she became acquainted with Ralph Waldo Emerson, prominent organist and teacher who made her his understudy and assistant in the Emerson Organ School. After a short while Ruth had her own pupils. In fact, she had too many to handle, for by this time, Ruth was being featured on numerous radio presentations in Chicago. Finally she decided to devote all her time to radio and since then has been featured over station in Illinois, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri. Ruth first appeared on small stations only, but as time went by her popularity increased so rapidly that she was brought to St. Louis as staff organist for one of the most powerful stations in the country – KMOX the Voice of St. Louis. One of her fondest memories is of the time when she supplied the organ accompaniment to that now famous Tony Wons in a program of Shakespearian interpretations.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 2/27/1932).

By Meryl Friedel

Someone has said, “the more a man has accomplished, the less he is apt to talk about himself or what he has done.”

Ruth Hulse Nelson, KMOX staff pianist and organist, is one of those people. Only just turned 29 – her birthday is June 23 – she has the distinction of being one of the very few musicians in the country recognized for her ability to play both the piano and organ with equal brilliance. Masters of these instruments say the difference in technique of playing either of them makes Ruth’s ability truly exceptional.

Yet only a handful of those who work with her know this…or know that Ruth is also a composer, that she was a child musical prodigy, that while still quite young, she won a famous musical scholarship, and that she has accompanied a number of famous singers.

She was born at Center, Missouri, but soon after, her parents moved to New London. It was there, when only three-and-a-half years old, that Ruth started her musical career with the study of the piano. She still cherishes “Red Wing” as the first complete song she ever played.

Her musical genius asserted itself immediately. When she was seven, she composed her first piece, “Dreams of the Night.” Already her fame as a pianist was beginning to spread and during that same year, she started a tour of Chautaqua circuits which lasted for two years.

Ruth attended the grade and high schools in New London, then went to Culver-Stockton College at Canton, Missouri. While at college, she also continued her musical study at the Quincy Conservatory of Music in Illinois. After two years there, she won a scholarship at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. It was soon after going to Chicago that she met Ralph Waldo Emerson, the noted organist who is a direct descendent of the famous poet. He induced her to start also studying the organ. It was then that she was studying piano, theory and harmony with the internationally famous Scionti. And during that period she composed the number that was so widely acclaimed as worthy of being classed with Percy Grainger compositions, “Southern Atmosphere.”

With all this fame and accomplishment…and more that we haven’t space to tell you about…Ruth has remained a charming unaffected young woman who displays none of the so-called temperament generally expected of successful artists.

Besides all her unusual musical talents, Ruth is pretty enough to have been successful on the stage. She has beautiful large, dark blue eyes, naturally wavy brown hair, is five feet, five inches tall and weighs only 115 pounds. And last, but most certainly not least, she has a gorgeous, infectious laugh that always makes the world seem right, no matter what mood one may be in.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 7/15/1933).