News from Our Archives

Versatility – one of the first requisites of a radio station attaché – is shown in the remarkable combination of talents of Don Hunt, chief continuity writer at KMOX, who now makes his debut as “The KMOX Song Writer.” He is now featured over KMOX each Friday at 10:05 a.m.

He interprets his own song compositions by his piano playing and singing voice. He plays the piano equally as effectively as he does the typewriter and the lyrics of his songs are as pleasing as his radio scripts.

On his program of last Friday he presented “I Do,” “Fortune Teller’s Song,” a number from his radiomusicomedy, “Fleurette,” “My Mother’s Flowers,” sung with Gay Lee, who is featured on the KMOX Noon Hour programs, and “Rosette.”

On his broadcast for Friday, July 8, he will present his original version of “River Jordan,” a spiritual; “Air de Ballet,” an instrumental number; “My Heart Is Your Heart,” and “Mary Ann, which he says is one of his favorites.

Under another radio alias Don Hunt is widely known as “Uncle Billy,” popular with children and grownups everywhere for his stories-in-song, and is heard from KMOX at 5 p/.m. daily except Saturday and Sunday.

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

Broadcasts from the new General Electric kitchen recently installed at KMOX are heard every morning at 11 o’clock when Ann Walsh, Home Economics expert, gives recipes, menus and household hints.

The foods made from recipes that call for Omega Flour and David G. Evans products are actually cooked in the studio during the broadcasts and Miss Walsh describes the results as they take place. The Singing Chefs, the four Schumate Brothers and Sunny Joe and his banjo supply the musical interludes in the programs.
(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 4/1/33).

KMOX Kitchen Interests Women Everywhere In USA, Including Mrs. Roosevelt
(By Meryl Freidel)
Old adages are sometimes trite and tiresome, but very often true. The one about “make a better mousetrap…” – you know it…is again proven true by the KMOX Magic Kitchen which, in the short space of five months has won national recognition for its new and unusual manner of teaching home economics to both and air  and a visible audience at one and the same time. It is the only actually-in-operation radio electric kitchen in the Midwest.

Only a few short weeks after its beginning, the Magic Kitchen began to receive letters from all parts of the country, from other radio stations and from home economics schools, asking full details about the KMOX enterprise so that they might start a similar one in their cities. About a month ago, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a personal letter to Ann Walsh, director of the kitchen, commending the work of the kitchen and enclosing one of her own favorite recipes to be made in the kitchen and passed on to its audience. Last week, the National 4-H Club for girls affiliated itself with kitchen through Miss Alice Classen, County Leader of the 4-H Club of St. Clair County. Miss Classen, declaring that the kitchen was an inspiration to the girls and a long sought opportunity to show interested homemakers just what the girls learn in the club is, each week, bringing a different group of six members of the club to the kitchen where they demonstrate in complete detail, methods of canning, various kinds of cooking, baking and so on.

The picture of the KMOX Magic Kitchen and its auditorium shown here gives only the very faintest idea of this unusual broadcast program and its setting. The kitchen itself, all glass-enclosed, is all electric, showing and using the latest in household appliances. The auditorium in front of it seats about three hundred persons and is filled to capacity every day during the program. Housewives come from far and near to inspect the kitchen’s many labor-saving devices and new accoutrements for better and easier housekeeping and cooking.

During the program, which is broadcast daily except Sunday from 11:15 a.m. to 11:45 a.m., Ann Walsh presents various new house keeping suggestions and a number of novel recipes, of which one is prepared in the kitchen each day as it is given. Several valuable prizes are distributed daily among the auditorium audience which, after the broadcast, personally inspects the Magic Kitchen…with many Ohs and Ahs of delight and amazement…and samples the particular recipe prepared that day.

Although originally started as a sustaining service to its listeners by the station, the Magic Kitchen received such instantaneous response from housewives all over the country that manufacturers of foods and household appliances asked to be represented during this unusual feature, with the result that six such national manufacturers now have their products demonstrated in the kitchen.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 7/8/1933).

Ann Walsh Dresses The Part On Home Economics Programs

Do you think that a crisp, white apron and a jaunty cap put you more in the mood for trying out delicious recipes?
Ann Walsh, home economics expert at KMOX, wears them when she stands before the microphone to talk confidentially to you about home planning and cooking. She says that is one of her chief cooking secrets, for when she goes into the kitchen, she likes to dress the part. It puts her more in the spirit for experimenting with the ingredients that make up the dainties she suggests to you over the air.

Even when she was a little girl and invited her playmates in for tea parties, she liked to wear becoming aprons and be a very correct hostess. A great number of her recipes come from a huge loose-leaf scrap book about good things to eat that she has been keeping since those make-believe days.

Long before little and red-haired Miss Walsh became known to her listeners as a cooking authority, she was behind the scenes so to speak in the varied, versatile capacities that are to be found in a radio station. She came to KMOX five years ago when George Junkin was director and did fifteen-minute singing programs presenting ballads and popular songs in a style all her own.

She remembers only two things about the first six months of her association there. She was frightened to death of Mr. Junkin and she adored him, as did everyone else at the station.

Her next step was that of studio director, when getting people in and out of audition rooms at the right time and seeing that everything was in readiness for the broadcasts were part of her worries. Going on the air in speaking parts was a gradual process and she hated it at first. When home economics became a greater feature, the news leaked out that she knew about good things to eat, which were almost total mysteries to everyone else, and she was chosen to direct this department.

Her career was almost nipped in the bud, however, for one night when a local soloist was to sing, she forgot to have an accompanist there. Mr. Junkin had already started to announce the numbers, and Miss Walsh pushed the protesting singer into the room and ran in search of a pianist. She was much too frightened to admit her error but scurried madly about to find someone to play. Before she returned, the director had seen the plight and heard Mrs. H. Carey Korndoerfer playing a one-finger accompaniment and had diverted the program.

She tells that as the worst of her radio experiences.

Letters asking about every conceivable thing in home management come to her from listeners, and she says that is the most gratifying part of talking to the unseen friends. She likes to feel that she is helping women in their homes with these aids that come from her own experiments and from scientific investigation.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 3/19/1932).

When he was a wee lad of three Ken Wright started playing original compositions – too original, some of them – on the piano. Then he graduated to a three-quarter violin to suit his childish chubbiness and thence to adept piano playing and finally to concert organ work.

You see, he was designed for a musical career even some twenty-two years ago when he gladdened his mother’s heart by playing these delightful three-year-old bits on the piano. She was a music teacher and it was just in that field that she hoped he would finally land.

He hails from Great Bend, Kansas, a village of some 6,000 souls, and it was there that he received the greatest part of his education both musical and educational. When he was eighteen, he decided that he would rather play an organ than anything else and in less than a year he was the rage at church and was sought after to open theaters in various cities in the great state of Kansas.

After he had achieved all honors that could be accorded to one young man in his home state, he landed in Menominee, Michigan, in a theater, and was there and thereabouts for four years.

He was featured in theaters as a master of ceremonies where he led an orchestra and introduced acts and played the organ. In his spare time he learned to play the accordion since it was easier to carry about than a piano or organ. His first radio work was done while he was there when he played from a theater for remote broadcasts, and he is given credit for having originated the novelty type of program. You may have read an extensive article crediting him with this advance of theater and microphone technique in the September 1931 edition of the Motion Picture Herald.

Last September he decided to take radio more seriously and came down to St. Louis where he joined the staff of KMOX been heard on original programs of his own, in-studio features, and has adapted his original theater title of  “The Singing Organist” in his daily morning programs where he sings an all-request hymn feature called “Morning Reveries.”

When he came here, he and Sunny Joe, the banjoist, formed a team, and by way of contrast, Walter Richards, the Program Production Director, dubbed him Sad Sam. So he is the same person, Sad Sam the accordionist, and Ken Wright the organist. Each program is typically different and indicative of the versatility of his ability and character.

Ken and Sad Sam, since he is the same, is probably the most serious minded person to be so merry that I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. His work is his paramount interest and one can practically feel his intent interest in his work when he is near. He has cabinets and more cabinets full of music through which he pours [sic] with all possible application when he is designing a single program for his listeners.

He is six-feet-two with brown hair and violet colored eyes. His features are regular and have the most flashing smile of great conviction. He is devoutly interested in every possible angle of his work and in his friends. One has the feeling that he is a trifle romantic but try as hard as I could, I could not discover what his ideal girl would be.

He has the forehead of a scholar and his eyes are rather quizzically slanted which might be an indication of the part that he is playing when he is Sad Sam. Ken speaks a good brand of French all of which he has mastered by himself and is thoroughly conversant on most of the intellectual subjects that there are.

He is likable and friendly and talented and handsome, in fact he answers the ideal requisite which one would create in one’s mind as his favorite radio entertainer. That he is a favorite is indicated by the several thousand fan letters he has received.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 2/11/33).