Radio Days

by Frank M. Roberts

December 2016

What was radio like in the dear old days - you know - when the music was 78rpm, and that was it; when the deejay didn't shout at you, when just about every disc jockey was a personality. What was it like? It was fun-fun-fun. Hearken:

In 1950 Uncle Sam said that I spent nearly four years lazing about in the Army - including two years with the Armed Forces Radio Services in Nome - I could have four years of college at taxpayers expense. But, I felt uneasy about using public funds and, I was 21-years-old and too restless to sit in a classroom.

I did utilize six months of free education and enrolled in the long-since defunct School of Radio Technique in my hometown - NYC. What they taught then would not amount to a small hill of beans now. Those days announcers - most of 'em - seem to believe that unless they yell and talk fast, their listeners would desert them.

In the 'old' days we were taught to speak slowly and d-i-s-t-i-n-c-t-l-y. Another ancient teaching: It was unwise to jump in and drown out the end of a record in order to regale the listeners with something fiendishly clever (usually a repeat of the information given when the disc began spinning).

We were also instructed to follow a certain method of playing the records. It was quite rhythmic, really - male vocalist, female vocalist, group, instrumental, novelty, back to male vocalist, etc. Instrumentals prior to news in case you have to cut.

After six months of drumming all that in my thick skull, I was ready to go out on my own. The school helped many of us find a job. I had thought that my instructors (most of them deejays on city stations) liked me but disillusionment set in when they managed to land me in Vineland, N. J.(now see on a teevee commercial). It was the Garden State's egg capital.

y boss was not a good egg. The station was WWBZ, owned by Fred Wood whose claim to fame was popularizing Jan Peerce's "Bluebird Of Happiness," during his (Wood's, not Peerce's) tenure as all-night jockey in Philadelphia.

As an innocent radio school virgin, I was at first delighted with the job and the dinky apartment I shared with Beverly (wife no. 1) on Plum Street. We put all our worldly goods in the car's glove apartment and, we were ready for fame and fortune. Neither struck. 'Fortune' was $38 a week. Fame was hard to come by because the announcers there were not allowed to say their names on the air, except during the six p.m. news on Sunday (and then, only once. I was very careful to pronounce my name correctly).

I felt that my months of study were for naught. We played some records, but a lot of time was spent introducing shows on the old World transcription series - minstrel shows, The Three Suns, and others.

Our job was to read the hackneyed scripts, and do it while disguising the disgust in our voices on having to mouth the pap that some $12 a week moonlighting copywriter dashed off to his secretary while taking a bath. (Note how the phrasing in that sentence leaves so much to the imagination).

Obviously, network executives, while listening to their car radios, detoured around Vineland. I was never picked up by NBC, CBS, ABC, or Mutual.

But, eventually, I did go on to bigger and better things moving from one station to another if they offered me $5 more. After Vineland, I went to Havre de Grace, MD, where I found a little more money and a lot more happiness.

And, I got to work with my first celebrities - Grandpa Jones and his wife, Ramona (both of whom I worked with, separately, later). I also worked with Buddy Morrow (whose big hit, "Night Train" was hot). His male vocalist was a Sinatra soundalike, Frankie Lester. His female vocalist was Joan House, Frankie Carle's daughter).

The initial fright I felt working with famous folk, whose records I had been spinning, whose names I dashed in the microphone with familiarity, while actually being in awe of them, wore off quickly when I discovered that the great majority of show-business celebrities are very nice people.

That is how my radio career started. In those early years I worked in several stations in such states as Maryland, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Texas. Then it was into television in North Carolina, and Iowa - then - about 50 years in newspaper work, most of the time with the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. In a way, I was back where I started - interviewing and reviewing the stars of that wonderful era. (I still do CD reviews for the Pilot).

A note about Havre de Grace. It was sandwiched between Bainbridge and Aberdeen, both large military bases, so I couldn't find a place to live. I commuted from Baltimore. While there, we lived in a cul de sac where, I soon discovered, several of my father's relatives lived - people I never knew existed.