Pastreunited.com ..... Memories and so much more !!
Do you have fond memories of sitting with your parents listening to the radio at night after supper? Well,
now a new generation can make good memories of radio too! Just download a radio show from an audio book website to your iPod,
Mp3 player, or computer and you can be listening in minutes
Radio went out of fashion for quite a while. Our society
has fallen in love with television and now the internet threatens to take over TV as more and more shows and movies are available
online. Radio was for all intents and purposes replaced except with the early morning commuters who listened to talk radio.
And the problem in the past with talk radio has been that it was attracting only a certain demographic. Not all people have
lengthy commutes and many people don't have jobs where they are able to sit and listen to radio. The ironic thing is that
one of the forms of media that has helped to replace radio, the internet, has now brought new life to it.
Downloading
radio shows from audio book websites is now more popular then ever. You can download a copy of an old radio show like the
Jack Benny program or your favourite morning radio show. You can then listen to it at a time that is convenient for you. This
practice is especially popular in Britain where 45 million Britons are now listening to radio. It is believed that this number
is due to the popularity of iPods and other mobile audio devices.
"Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation"
The British Broadcasting Corporation, which is usually
known simply as the BBC, is the world's largest broadcasting corporation. It has 28,000 employees in the United Kingdom
alone and an annual budget of more than £4 billion. Founded on 18 October 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company
Ltd, it was subsequently granted a Royal Charter and made a state-owned corporation in 1927. The corporation produces programmes
and information services, broadcasting globally on television, radio, and the Internet. The stated mission of the BBC is "to
inform, educate and entertain" (as laid down by Parliament in the BBC Charter); its motto is "Nation Shall Speak
Peace Unto Nation". The BBC is a quasi-autonomous public corporation as a public service broadcaster. The Corporation
is run by the BBC Trust; and is, per its charter, "free from both political and commercial influence and answers only
to its viewers and listeners".
A lot of folks still don't know what web radio is. Let's note first of all that it is not the same thing as
podcasting, although the two are often confused. Without going into the technicalities, web radio uses streaming audio to
create a "live," ongoing broadcast such as you would hear from a regular radio station. Podcasting involves the
creation of individual recordings which people can download for listening at a later time, either on their computer or on
an MP3 player such as an iPod. For a long time web radio was plagued by problems. Sound quality was usually poor. Because
of the bandwidth required, many web radio stations were severely limited in the number of people they permitted to listen
at any one time--in some cases, this could be as few as a half dozen! The number and variety of stations were quite limited,
as well. Happily, most of those early limitations have been resolved. The web radio scene today presents a wonderful smorgasbord
of musical variety, an incredible array of genres to suit all tastes, and a quality that often matches high-end stereo for
the ability to produce a satisfying listening experience. Although web radio's primary audiences remain office workers
and college students, more and more people are discovering this neat entertainment source. One study in the UK reported an
84% increase in internet radio listening hours for the most recent year. Another study said web radio attracts 52 million
listeners during a typical month.
Web radio is free to listen to, for the most part, and the software one needs
to take advantage of it is free as well. Player software such as WinAmp or iTunes not only sends the music to your computer
speakers, it also generally includes a directory of radio channels--just click on your choice and play. The directory will
almost always be arranged by genres, some of the more popular being blues, oldies, rock, psychedelia, easy listening, country,
trance or electronic, country, reggae, world music and hip hop. The diversity truly is astounding: the other day I ran across
a web radio station devoted exclusively to Hawaiian and polka music!
The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American
radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween special on October 30, 1938 and aired
over the CBS Radio network. Directed by Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells' classic novel The
War of the Worlds.
The first half of the 60-minute broadcast was presented as a series of news bulletins, which
suggested to many listeners that an actual Martian invasion was in progress. Some fled their homes; others merely were terrified.
The news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against
the perpetrators of the broadcast, but the episode launched Welles to fame.
Scroll
down for some free downloads of Radio shows
The
Rock-it Radio Launching Pad focuses on the music that we play here online at Rock-it Radio. When you order off of this website and the
links to this site, not only do you get the great 50’s and 60’s music that we play or movies dedicated to the
life style of the 1950's ... you also help us stay on the air and broadcast this music of the first decade of Rock and
Roll & Rockabilly Roots band out there playing today.
What was radio really like at the dawn of the 1930s?
As the new decade began, the medium was moving into its adolescence. The experimental years were over, the networks
were off and rolling, and the movement toward making radio a form of Wholesale Entertainment For The Masses was well underway.
The most popular program format of the late twenties was the sponsored musical feature. It could be a large
symphonic group, a dance orchestra, or a song-and-patter team -- and it would usually carry the sponsor's name. The A&P
Gypsies, for example -- a large, genre-crossing orchestra conducted by Harry Horlick. The Ipana Troubadours -- a hot dance
band directed by Sam Lanin. The Goodrich Zippers -- a banjo-driven orchestra conducted by Harry Reser, when he wasn't
leading the same group under the name of The Cliquot Club Eskimos. Everyone remembers The Happiness Boys, Billy Jones and
Ernie Hare -- but what about Scrappy Lambert and Billy Hillpot, who performed exactly the same sort of material as
Trade and Mark, The Smith Brothers. The list is endless: The Silvertown Cord Orchestra, featuring the Silver Masked
Tenor. The Sylvania Foresters. The Flit Soldiers -- yet another Harry Reser group. The Champion Sparkers. The Fox Fur
Trappers. The Ingram Shavers, who were the Ipana Troubadours on alternate Wednesdays. The Yeast Foamers. The Planters
Pickers. And, the magnificently named Freed-Eisemann Orchestradians. All playing pretty much the same sorts of music,
all announced by Phillips Carlin or John S. Young or Alwyn Bach or Milton Cross in pretty much the same sort of stiffly
formal style.
We offer hundreds
of vintage radio shows for you to listen to online in mp3 format, all for free. Before the days of video games, shopping malls,
MTV, and the Internet, families used to sit in their living room each night to listen to radio shows such as Superman, Groucho
Marx, The Avenger, Gunsmoke, Sherlock Homes, and many others. When TV become popular in the 1950's, most of these shows
went off the air, but they now live on at websites such as this one and on weekly nostalgia radio broadcasts worldwide.
Old-Time Radio (OTR) and the Golden Age of Radio refer
to a period of radio programming in the United States lasting from the proliferation of radio broadcasting in the early 1920s
until television's replacement of radio as the dominant home entertainment medium in the 1950s. During this period, when
radio was dominant and the airwaves were filled with a variety of radio formats and genres, people regularly tuned in to their
favorite radio programs. In fact, according to a 1947 C. E. Hooper survey, 82 out of 100 Americans were found to be radio
listeners. The end of this period coincided with music radio becoming the dominant radio form and is often marked in the United
States by the final CBS broadcasts of Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar on September 30, 1962.
Radio content
in the Golden Age of Radio had its origins in audio theatre. Audio theatre began in the 1880s and 1890s with audio recordings of musical acts and other vaudeville. These were sent to people by means of telephone and, later, through phonograph cylinders
and discs. Visual elements, such as effects and sight gags, were adapted to have sound equivalents. In addition, visual objects
and scenery were converted to have audio descriptions.
On Christmas Eve, 1906, Reginald Fessenden sent the first
radio program broadcast, which was made up of some violin playing and passages from the Bible. At least one radio researcher
has questioned whether this broadcast took place, because it was not mentioned in print until many years later.Then, after
the Titanic catastrophe in 1912, radio for communications went into vogue. Radio was especially important during World War
I, since it was vital for air and naval operations. In fact, World War I sped the development of radio by transitioning radio
communications from the Morse code of the wireless telegraph to the vocal communication of the wireless telephone through
advancements in vacuum tube technology and the introduction of the transceiver.
After the war, numerous radio stations
were born and set the standard for later radio programs. The first radio news program was broadcast on August 31, 1920 on
the station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan. This was followed in 1920 with the first commercial radio station in the United States,
KDKA, being established in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The first regular entertainment programs were broadcast in 1922, and
on March 10, Variety carried the front page headline "Radio Sweeping Country 1,000,000 Sets in Use." A highlight
of this time was the first Rose Bowl being broadcast on January 1, 1923 on the Los Angeles station KHJ.
A message from Tom Heathwood: Thanks
to every one of our listeners...Heritage Radio Classics has been providing collectors and nostalgia buffs with the best in
vintage radio shows from the 1930's, 40's and 50's on high quality audio cassettes since 1971!
Old time radio shows are a wonderful form of entertainment.
If you've never experienced the thrills of a classic detective show such as Sam Spade or a police procedural series such
as Dragnet you're in for a pleasant surprise and if you have then you'll know just what I'm talking about.
Amongst the hundreds of series available (over 500 at the last count) on the OTR-FTP Server you'll find an excellent
mix of suspense, drama and comedy along with quiz shows, classic sports events and even shows for kids. Start downloading
today! Most of the shows are 30 minutes long and are ideal for listening to in your car, whilst sat working at your computer
or even when out walking or jogging if you have a portable MP3 player.
Old-Time Radio (OTR) and the Golden Age of Radio
refer to a period of radio programming lasting from the proliferation of radio broadcasting in the early 1920s until television's
replacement of radio as the dominant home entertainment medium in the late 1950s and early 1960s. During this period, when
radio was dominant and the airwaves were filled with a variety of radio formats and genres, people regularly tuned in to their
favorite radio programs. In fact, according to a 1947 C. E. Hooper survey, 82 out of 100 Americans were found to be radio
listeners. The end of this period coincided with music radio becoming the dominant radio form and is often marked in the United
States by the final CBS broadcasts of Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar on September 30, 1962.
The 1950s also saw the
popular dominance of the Nashville sound in country music, and the beginning of popular folk music with groups like The Weavers.
Country's Nashville sound was slick and soulful, and a movement of rough honky tonk developed in a reaction against the
mainstream orientation of Nashville. This movement was centered in Bakersfield, California with musicians like Buck Owens
("Act Naturally"), Merle Haggard ("Sing a Sad Song") and Wynn Stewart ("It's Such a Pretty World
Today") helping to define the sound among the community, made up primarily of Oklahoman immigrants to California, who
had fled unemployment and drought. A similarly hard-edged sound also arose in Lubbock, Texas (Lubbock sound).
By the
late 1950s, a revival of Appalachian folk music was taking place across the country, and bands like The Weavers were paving
the way for future mainstream stars like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Bluegrass was similarly revitalized and updated by artists
including Tony Rice, Clarence White, Richard Green, Bill Keith and David Grisman. The Dillards, however, were the ones to
break bluegrass into mainstream markets in the early 1960s.
In addition,
doo wop achieved widespread popularity in the 1950s. Doo wop was a harmonically complex style of choral singing that developed
in the streets of major cities like Chicago, New York, and, most importantly, Baltimore. Doo Wop singers would work a cappella
without backing instruments, and practice in hallways of their schools, apartment buildings, or alleys to achieve echo effects
on their voices, and lyrics were generally innocent youthful observations on the upsides of teen love and romance. Groups
like The Crows ("Gee"), The Orioles ("It's Too Soon to Know") and Brooklyn's Frankie Lymon &
the Teenagers ("Why Do Fools Fall in Love") had a string of hit songs that brought the genre to chart domination
by 1958 (see 1958 in music).
The pre-history and early history of radio is the
history of technology that produced instruments that use radio waves. Later radio history increasingly involves matters of
programming and content.
Various scientists proposed that electricity and magnetism, both capable of causing
attraction and repulsion of objects, were linked. In 1802 Gian Domenico Romagnosi suggested the relationship between electric
current and magnetism, but his reports went unnoticed. In 1820 Hans Christian Ørsted performed a widely known experiment
on man-made electric current and magnetism. He demonstrated that a wire carrying a current could deflect a magnetized compass
needle. Ørsted's experiments discovered the relationship between electricity and magnetism in a very simple experiment.
Ørsted's work influenced André-Marie Ampère to produce a theory of electromagnetism. In the history
of radio and development of "wireless telegraphy", several people are claimed to have "invented the radio".
The most commonly accepted claims are:
Jagadish Chandra Bose Alexander Stepanovich Popov Nikola Tesla,
who developed means to reliably produce radio frequency currents, publicly demonstrated the principles of radio, and transmitted
long distance signals. In 1943 the US Supreme Court upheld Tesla's patent number U.S. Patent 645,576 in effect recognizing
him as the inventor of radio. Guglielmo Marconi, who equipped ships with life-saving wireless communications, conducted
a reported transatlantic radio communications experiments in 1901 and established the first commercial transatlantic radio
service in 1907.
Radio content in the Golden Age of Radio had its
origins in audio theatre. Audio theatre began in the 1880s and 1890s with audio recordings of musical acts and other vaudeville.
These were sent to people by means of telephone and, later, through phonograph cylinders and discs. Visual elements, such
as effects and sight gags, were adapted to have sound equivalents. In additions, visual objects and scenery were converted
to have audio descriptions.
On Christmas Eve, 1906, Reginald Fessenden sent the first radio program broadcast,
which was made up of some violin playing and passages from the bible. At least one radio researcher has questioned whether
this broadcast took place, because it was not mentioned in print until many years later.Then, after the Titanic catastrophe
in 1912, radio for communications went into vogue. Radio was especially important during World War I, since it was a primary
source of communication for both sides. Then, after the war and before radio regulation, numerous radio stations began starting
up and setting the standard for later radio programs.
Broadcasting was not yet supported by advertising
or listener sponsorship. The stations owned by manufacturers and department stores were established to sell radios and those
owned by newspapers to sell newspapers and express the opinions of the owners. In the 1920s, Radio was first used to transmit
pictures visible as television. During the early 1930s, single sideband (SSB) and frequency modulation (FM) were invented
by amateur radio operators. By 1940, they were established commercial modes.
Westinghouse was brought into the
patent allies group, General Electric, American Telephone and Telegraph, and Radio Corporation of America, and became a part
owner of RCA. All radios made by GE and Westinghouse were sold under the RCA label 60% GE and 40% Westinghouse. ATT's
Western Electric would build radio transmitters. The patent allies attempted to set up a monopoly, but they failed due to
successful competition. Much to the dismay of the patent allies, several of the contracts for inventor's patents held
clauses protecting "amateurs" and allowing them to use the patents. Whether the competing manufacturers were really
amateurs was ignored by these competitors.
Cajun and Creole music
The 1940s saw a return to the roots of Cajun music, led by Iry LeJeune, Nathan Abshire and other artists, alongside musicians
who incorporated rock and roll, including Laurence Walker and Aldus Roger. In the late 1940s, Clifton Chenier, a Creole, began
playing an updated form of la la called zydeco. Zydeco was briefly popular among some mainstream listeners during the 1950s.
Artists like Boozoo Chavis, Queen Ida, Rockin' Dopsie and Rockin' Sidney have continued to bring zydeco to national
audiences in the following decades. Zydeco shows major influences from rock, and artists like Beau Jocque have combined other
influences, including hip hop.
The
Armed Forces Radio Services (AFRS) has its origins in the War Department's quest to improve troop morale. This quest began
with short-wave broadcasts of educational and information programs to troops in 1940. In 1941, the War Department began issuing
"Buddy Kits" (B-Kits) to departing troops, which comprised radios, 78 RPM shellac records, and electrical transcription
disks of radio shows. However, with the entrance of the United States into World War II, the War Department decided that it
needed to improve the quality and quantity of its offerings.
This began with the broadcasting of its own original
variety programs. Command Performance became the first of these, when it was produced for the first time on March 1, 1942.
On May 26, 1942, the Armed Forces Radio Services was formally established. Originally, its programming comprised network radio
shows with the commercials removed. However, it soon began producing other original programming, such as Mail Call, G.I. Journal,
Jubilee, and G.I. Jive. At its peak in 1945, the Service produced around twenty hours of original programming each week.
In
the United States, radio comedy and drama gets relatively little airplay apart from National Public Radio, satellite and Internet
radio, but it continues full strength on British and Irish stations, and to a lesser degree in Canada. Regular broadcasts
of radio plays are also heard in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and other countries. Vintage shows and new audio productions
in America are accessible more on recordings and by satellite and web broadcasters rather than over conventional AM and FM
radio. There are, however, several radio theatre series still in production, usually airing on Sunday nights in the United
States. These include original series such as Imagination Theatre and a radio adaptation of The Twilight Zone, as well as
rerun compilations such as the popular daily series When Radio Was and USA Radio Network's Golden Age of Radio Theatre.
One of the longest running radio programs celebrating this era is The Golden Days of Radio, which was hosted on the
Armed Forces Radio Service (later Armed Forces Radio and Television Service) for more than 20 years and overall for more than
50 years by Frank Bresee, who also played "Little Beaver" on the Red Ryder program as a child actor.
AFRTS is the American Forces Radio and Television Service.
It is part of the Department of Defense, and is headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia. The AFRTS mission is to communicate
Department of Defense policies, priorities, programs, goals and initiatives. AFRTS provides stateside radio and television programming, "a touch of home," to U.S.
service men and women, DoD civilians, and their families serving outside the continental United States.
The most common type of receiver before vacuum tubes
was the crystal set, although some early radios used some type of amplification through electric current or battery. Inventions
of the triode amplifier, motor-generator, and detector enabled audio radio. The use of amplitude modulation (AM), with which
more than one station can simultaneously send signals (as opposed to spark-gap radio, where one transmitter covers the entire
bandwidth of spectra) was pioneered by Fessenden and Lee de Forest.
To this day there is a small but avid base
of fans of this technology who study and practice the art and science of designing and making crystal sets as a hobby; the
Boy Scouts of America have often undertaken such craft projects to introduce boys to electronics and radio, and quite a number
of them having grown up remain staunch fans of a radio that 'runs on nothing, forever'. As the only energy available
is that gathered by the antenna system, there are inherent limitations on how much sound even an ideal set could produce,
but with only moderately decent antenna systems remarkable performance is possible with a superior set.
The Archers is a British radio soap opera broadcast
on the BBC's main speech (as opposed to music) channel, Radio 4. It is the world's longest running radio soap with
more than 15,000 episodes broadcast, and was originally billed as an "everyday story of country folk".Despite its
rural flavour, it is recorded in the heart of Birmingham, the UK's second largest city. The Archers is the most listened
to Radio 4 non-news programme, and holds the BBC Radio programme record for the number of times listened to over the internet,
with over one million listeners
The Shipping Forecast is a four-times-daily BBC
radio broadcast of weather reports and forecasts for the seas around the coasts of Britain and Ireland. It is produced
by the UK Meteorological Office (part of MOD) and broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency
(part of Department for Transport).
The
forecasts sent over the Navtex system use a similar format, and the same sea areas.
Latin music
Cuban
mambo, chachachá and charanga bands enjoyed brief periods of popularity, and helped establish a viable Latin-American
music industry, which led the way to the invention of salsa music among Cubans and Puerto Ricans in New York City in the 1970s.
The '50s also saw success for Mexican ranchera divas, while a Mexican-American mariachi scene was developing on the West
Coast, and Puerto Rican plena, Brazilian bossa nova and other Latin genres became popular.
Mexican-Texans had
been playing conjunto music for decades by the end of World War 2, female duos created the first popular style of Mexican-American
music, música norteña. Mexican romantic ballads called bolero were also popular, especially singers like the
Queen of the Bolero, Chelo Silva. In the mid-1950s, when Mexican ranchera was used in Hollywood film soundtracks and the upper-class
enjoyed stately orquestas Tejanas and conjunto evolved into a distinctively Mexican-American genre called Tejano. Artists
of this era include Esteban Jordan, Tony de la Rosa and El Conjunto Bernal.
In 1938 the top brass of the BBC decided that they should
have a regular weekly comedy show, along the lines of the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show which was very popular in the
United States. It was to star Tommy Handley, a well-known Liverpudlian comedian, whose first broadcast was a relay from the
London Coliseum of the Royal Command Performance of December 1923.
Several scripts were prepared, but, not being
very keen on any of them, Tommy asked a friend to see if he could come up with something. The friend was Ted Kavanagh, and
the something was ITMA, soon to become the most popular radio series of the 1940s.
Tommy and Ted, together with
producer Francis Worsley , retired to the Langham Hotel in Portland Place, opposite Broadcasting House. Here they devised
the format over pints of beer amid a packed conference of clergymen.
They decided to name the show after a topical
catchphrase associated with a short moustached Nazi who seemed to be causing quite a stir internationally. Whenever Hitler
made some new territorial claim, the newspaper headlines would proclaim 'It's That Man Again'. That looked fine
in print, but was a bit of a mouthful to repeat over the microphone. Something snappier was called for, and once again inspiration
was to be found in contemporary issues. At the beginning of the war everyone seemed initial crazy. People spoke of the R.A.F.,
the A.R.P., E.N.S.A and many others, so the programme title was shortened to ITMA.
A trial series of four shows
began fortnightly from 12th July 1939. The setting was a pirate commercial radio ship, from which Tommy Handley sent his choice
of programmes. He was assisted by Cecilia Eddy as his secretary Cilly, Eric Egan as a mad Russian inventor, Sam Heppner and
Lionel Gamlin. These early editions broadcast from London, were modelled on the ground-breaking Bandwaggon, starring Arthur
Askey and Richard Murdoch. However, they weren't considered a success, and ITMA seemed destined to end there.
Ironically, the aforementioned Herr Hitler deemed otherwise. The outbreak of war shook up the BBC schedules and ITMA returned
on 19th September 1939 for a weekly series of 21 episodes. These were transmitted from Bristol, where the BBC Variety Department
had taken up residence, hoping to avoid the heavy bombing raids directed at London.
A pirate radio ship was not
considered to be a suitable subject during wartime, so a new scenario was sought. In the early days of the war, new Government
Ministries sprang up like mushrooms, almost overnight. It was decided that for the second series Tommy Handley should be Minister
of Aggravation and Mysteries at the Office of Twerps. A brand new supporting cast was enlisted, amongst them Vera Lennox as
his secretary Dotty, Maurice Denham as Mrs. Tickle the office char and Vodkin the Russian inventor, Jack Train and Sam Costa.
In the second episode, Jack Train created Funf, the elusive German spy, whose catchphrase 'This is Funf speaking'
was to work it’s way into many private telephone conversations over the next few years. It all who helped to make the
German propaganda machine seem little more than a wireless joke.
One of the regular features in this series was Radio
Fakenburg, send up of Radio Luxembourg which had stopped broadcasting for the duration.
Increased popularity led
to a couple of stage shows which briefly toured the country. Unfortunately they lacked the impact of the radio shows and folded
when the blitz destroyed many of the theatres.
Meanwhile Bristol had also suffered from German bombing, so the
BBC Variety Department was once again on the move, this time to Bangor in North Wales. With escalating bad news for the allies
abroad, take-offs of Government Departments would no longer be acceptable. Instead, it was felt that ITMA should provide an
escape for a war weary public.
The show was renamed 'It's That Sand Again' and began a six week summer
season on 20th June 1941. It was set in a seedy seaside resort called Foaming at the Mouth, with Tommy Handley as the town's
Mayor. Vera Lennox and Maurice Denham had departed, and in their place came Sydney Keith, Horace Percival, Dorothy Summers
and Fred Yule. Several soon-to-be-famous characters were launched: Lefty and Sam, the gangsters (Train and Keith); Deepend
Dan the Diver (Percival), (based on a man that Tommy Handley once saw seeing diving off the pier at New Brighton and collecting
money from ferry passengers), Claude and Cecil, the over polite handymen (Train and Percival) and Ali Oop (Percival), a Middle
Eastern vendor of saucy postcards and other dubious merchandise.
The popular seaside setting was continued in the
fourth series which ran for 32 weeks from 26th September 1941. The show reverted to its original name. The team were joined
by Dino Galvani as Tommy Handley's Italian secretary Signor So-So and Clarence Wright as the commercial traveller who
never made a sale but didn't seem to care. In October, Dorothy Summers introduced the famous office char, Mrs. Mopp, sent
by the ,Labour, to dust the Mayor's dado with much clattering of bucket and brush. She later progressed to her own series,
'The private life of Mrs Mopp' in 1946.
In April the cast were honoured to be invited to perform a special
show at Windsor Castle to celebrate the then Princess Elizabeth' s 16th birthday. This was the first such event for a
BBC programme. A recording was made, which has never been broadcast, but still exists in the BBC Sound Archives.
Another high point was the release of a film version of ITMA starring Tommy Handley as the Mayor of Foaming at the Mouth,
putting on a show to save a bombed theatre. This was to prove quite successful, but like the stage show, the visual characters
lacked the appeal of their radio counterparts. Like many later radio shows, Ted Kavanagh’s creations worked best in
the mind of the listener.
By the time they had returned to the airwaves in September 1942, Foaming at the Mouth
was graced with a war factory. It was never made clear what, if anything, it was producing - even the workers didn't seem
to know. The famous Colonel Humphrey Chinstrap made his first appearance, and rapidly became one of the most popular characters.
The colonel was a dipsomaniac army officer who turned almost any innocent remark into the offer of a drink with his catchphrase
'I don't mind if I do'. The following season saw the war factory turned into a spa, a holiday camp, a hotel and
other similar things.
By October 1943, the worst of the air raids were thought to be over, so the BBC Variety Department
packed up and made it’s way back to London. The seventh series, with Tommy now Squire of Much Fiddling, was recorded
without Jack Train who was seriously ill, but with the addition of Jean Capra, discovered by the first ever auditions for
the show.
A special edition was broadcast early the following year from the Navy base at Scapa Flow. Not to be
outdone, this was followed by episodes allocated to The Royal Air Force (held at the Criterion Theatre in London) and the
Army (from a garrison theatre ‘somewhere in England’).
Jack Train returned in September, and with a
new voice named Mark Time, an elderly, depraved character who answered all questions with 'I'll 'ave to ask me
Dad', newcomer Diana Morrison played Miss Hotchkiss, Tommy’s domineering secretary, was named after a make of machine
gun. The end of the war was celebrated by the VE edition on 10th May 1945.
A decision was made that the first post-war
series should have a completely new look, and most of the familiar characters were dropped. Dorothy Summers, Sydney Keith
and Dino Galvani departed, while Carleton Hobbs (later to become radio’s Sherlock Holmes), Hugh Morton, Mary O'Farrell,
Michele de Lys and Lind Joyce joined the cast. Clarence Wright returned after leaving at the end of the fifth series. As
a reward for his war work, Tommy Handley was appointed Governor of a newly discovered South Sea island called Tomtopia. During
the month-long sea cruise to the island. During the journey Tommy met Curly Kale (Carleton Hobbs), the chef who hated food
but loved terrible puns; George Gorge (Fred Yule), a glutton who could eat any quantity of 'lovely grub' and Sam Fairfechan
(Hugh Morton), the contradictory Welshman. Accompanying them on the journey was Colonel Chinstrap, who made straight for the
Jungle Arms on arrival at their destination.
The local population included Bigga Banga (Fred Yule), the native
chief who spoke only Utopi language, his daughter and translator Banjeleo (Lind Joyce); Wamba M'Boojah (Hugh Morton),
another Tomtopian native whose Oxbridge accent was the result of a spell as an announcer with the BBC's Overseas Service
and Major Munday (Carleton Hobbs), an ex-British army officer who had lived in isolation since the Boer war and now believed
that England was exactly as it had been in the nineteenth century.
On 19th September 1946, back from a few months
off the air, Mrs. Handley’s boy was rather closer to home, resting at Castle Weehouse in Scotland. Here he met Tattie
Mackintosh (Molly Weir), Dan Dungeon the castle guide and fellow Liverpudlian and Frisby Dyke (both Deryck Guyler). Following
a misdirected attempt to visit the moon in a rocket, he found himself back in Tomtopia for the rest of the series.
A year later Tommy was appointed the Governments adviser on industrial and scientific affairs. The position led to investigations
into the radio industry and industrial psychology, organisation of a fuel saving campaign and a PR programme for England.
Hattie Jacques debuted as Sophie Tuckshop, the greedy schoolgirl, whose prandial excesses were invariably followed by a giggle
and 'but I'm all right now'.
The twelfth, and final, series began on 23rd September 1948. Down on his
luck, Tommy was now a permanent resident at Henry Hall (the tramps guesthouse), run by Miss Hotchkiss. For the milestone 300th
episode of 28th October the setting was Madame Tussaudes Waxworks in London. Here passing through a door marked 'The Hall
of ITMA's Past', Tommy was reunited with many favourite characters from Foaming at the Mouth and Tomtopia, with Dino
Galvani, Horace Percival, Clarence Wright, Lind Joyce and Dorothy Summers all making guest appearances.
The last
ITMA went out on 6th January 1949. Tommy Handley died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage three days later. The news was conveyed
to a stunned public immediately after the usual repeat broadcast. Tommy had been suffering from high blood pressure for some
time, and his death seems a direct consequence of his dedication to work.
Thousands of mourners and sightseers
lined the six mile route from a private chapel in Westbourne Grove to the Golders Green Crematorium, where the scene looked
more like the Palladium on the night of a Royal Variety Performance than a funeral. Crowds of sightseers cheered as each celebrity
arrived for the service, and several people took flowers from the tributes as souvenirs. Two memorial services were held.
One at St. Pauls Cathedral in London and the other at Liverpool Cathedral. At the St. Pauls service the then Bishop of London
said that 'he was one whose genius transmuted the copper of our common experience into the gold of exquisite foolery.
His raillery was without cynicism, and his satire without malice....... From the highest to the lowest in the land, people
had found in his programme an escape from their troubles and anxieties into a world of whimsical nonsense.
The
Radio Times shows that there was an ITMA show scheduled for 13th January, but this was to be replaced by a special tribute
programme. Later in the Light Programme magazine show 'Mirror of the Month', sound effects boys Brian Begg and Johnny
Ammonds reminisced and demonstrated some of the ITMA effects. The item ended with the suggestion 'Shall we close the door
for the last time?'. They did, and this was followed by a five second pause. One radio critic thought this the most poignant
tribute of the all.
Many editions of ITMA were recorded, but only small percentage have survived. Listening to
them now, they seem very dated, and it is often difficult to see why the show was so immensely popular, sometimes with forty
percent of the British population tuning in. But it took people's minds off the horrors of war and produced a sort of
nationwide family spirit. This was helped by the liberal use of catchphrases, many of which passed into the language. Characters
would a knock at the famous imaginary door, enter, exchange funny lines with Tommy Handley at machine gun speed, deliver the
unvarying closing remark and exit to enormous applause - almost like a factory production line.
The popularity
of the catchphrases is demonstrated by a letter which Tommy Handley received from a little girl who had been taken to see
the Tempest in Manchester. At one point an unfortunate actor playing Ariel had to say the fatal words 'I go, I go',
which was followed by the whole audience shouting 'I come back' -the catchphrase of Ali Oop.
After the
death of Tommy Handley the BBC wisely decided to let the show die with him. The only surviving character was Jack Train's
Colonel Chinstrap. In 1950, the Colonel appeared in a long forgotten series called The Great Gilhooly. A documentary about
his life was broadcast on 1st January 1954 and he appeared in two episodes of a series which was to achieve the same popularity
in the 1950s (and beyond) that ITMA had enjoyed a decade before……The Goon Show.
Thank you for stopping by the home of sixties music
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world at a time to suit you!
We are happy to be able to offer hundreds of old
time radio shows for free download. Once you download these free OTR shows you can then listen to them on your computer or
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40's and 50's. By offering free OTR downloads we can keep the innocent spirit of the golden age of radio alive in
the new millennium! Some of our favorite old time radio shows include The Shadow, Amos & Andy, Fibber McGee & Molly,
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Here you may once again listen to those great old
radio classics by way of contemporary broadcasters. These broadcasts each contain several complete old-time radio programs
provided by broadcasters dedicated to preserving and encouraging Old Time Radio.
On these pages are pictures of old BBC radio equipment
and memories from the people who built, maintained and used it. We don't aim at building a comprehensive history
but to provide some 'snap-shots' of times and places. Many thanks to all contributors of photos and information.
On August 14, 1967 - In the United Kingdom
a Marine Offences Act came into force prompting many offshore radio stations to close, most prominently Radio London off Frinton
in Essex at 3pm local time on this day. The Act boosted a campaign for onshore commercial radio to be legalised, which would
enable listeners to choose a non-BBC English-language station and cause the establishment style of BBC radio to be relaxed
and refreshed. See BBC Radio 1. Modern day pirate radio stations often cater for
local communities and underground music fans that are not necessarily catered for by larger corporate radio stations. Some of the pirate stations are now legal and successful outfits, including Radio Jackie and
Kiss FM in London, and the Sunshine Radio in Ludlow, Shropshire, which was run from studios at the end of a farm drive in
its unlicensed days.
Bluegrass
In 1938, Bill Monroe formed
the Blue Grass Boys (named after his native state of Kentucky, the blue grass state) and combined diverse influences into
Appalachian folk music. These include Scottish, Irish and Eastern European folk, as well as blues, jazz and gospel. Monroe
became the father of bluegrass music, and his band was a training ground for most of bluegrass' future stars, especially
Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. Scruggs and Flatt popularized bluegrass as part of the Foggy Mountain Boys, which they formed
in 1948. Though bluegrass never quite achieved mainstream status, it did become well-known through its use in several soundtracks,
including the T.V. theme song for The Beverly Hillbillies and the movies Bonnie and Clyde and Deliverance. In the 1950s, bluegrass
artists included Stanley Brothers, Osborne Brothers and Jimmy Martin's Sunny Mountain Boys.
Following World
War 2, gospel began its golden age. Artists like the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, The Swan Silvertones, Clara Ward Singers
and Sensational Nightingales became stars across the country; other early artists like Sam Cooke, Dionne Warwick, Dinah Washington,
Johnnie Taylor, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett began their career in gospel quartets during this period, only to achieve
even greater fame in the '60s as the pioneers of soul music, itself a secularized, R&B-influenced form of gospel.
Mahalia Jackson and The Staple Singers were undoubtedly the most successful of the golden age gospel artists.
Radio -- signaling and audio communication
using electromagnetic radiation -- was first employed as a "wireless telegraph", for point-to-point links where
regular telegraph lines were unreliable or impractical. Next developed was radio's ability to broadcast messages simultaneously
to multiple locations, at first using the dots-and-dashes of telegraphic code, and later in full audio.
Although
"electromagnetic radiation" is the formal scientific term for what Heinrich Hertz demonstrated with his simple spark
transmitter in the 1880s, in addition to "radio" numerous other descriptive phrases were used in the early days,
including various permutations of "Hertzian waves", "electric waves", "ether waves", "spark
telegraphy", "space telegraphy", "aerography" and "wireless". In the November 30, 1901
Electrical Review, a letter from G. C. Dietz offered "atmography" as the answer to What Shall We Call It?, but the
suggestion fell on deaf ears. Spark, Space, Wireless, Etheric, Hertzian Wave or Cableless Telegraphy--Which? by A. Frederick
Collins in the August 24, 1901 Western Electrician wondered whether the question might eventually become academic, for "In
the distant future when all wire systems, both telegraph and telephone, have been superseded by the so-called wireless, there
will be no confusing qualifying adjectives, for there will be no dual systems requiring qualification, and wireless telegraphy
and telephony will be spoken of as simply telegraphy and telephony." So, what's the difference between wireless and
radio? "There ain't none" -- both refer to the exact same thing -- explains Edward C. Hubert in Radio vs. Wireless,
from the January, 1925, Radio News.
RADIO DEVELOPMENT
The 1901 edition of J. J. Fahie's A
History of Wireless Telegraphy reviewed in detail the development of wireless technologies up though Guglielmo Marconi's
work. In 1917, Donald McNicol wrote about the importance of documenting radio's "historical narrative", noting:
"I believe it to be the duty of those acquainted with views and facts of its introduction to set [the most illuminating
essentials] down for the inspection of the ultimate historian". McNicol's overview of The Early Days of Radio in
America, from the April, 1917 issue of The Electrical Experimenter, covered significant events, articles, books and individuals
during the period from 1896 through 1904, beginning with Guglielmo Marconi's groundbreaking demonstrations in Great Britain.
(Included in this article are links to nineteen items mentioned in the review.) In the June, 1917 Proceedings of the Institute
of Radio Engineers, Robert H. Marriott comprehensively reviewed technical advances plus the struggles and character flaws
encountered during early United States Radio Development.
EARLY EXPERIMENTERS
Beginning in the late 1880s, Heinrich Hertz
conducted a series of experiments in Germany which proved the existence of radio waves. Moreover, the devices used in early
radio demonstrations could readily be constructed by self-trained individuals -- in the July 6, 1894 The Electrician (London),
Oliver Lodge, reviewing "The Work of Hertz", noted that "Many of the experiments lend themselves to easy repetition,
since they require nothing novel in the way of apparatus except what is easily constructed; many of them can be performed
with the ordinary stock apparatus of an amateur's laboratory." A few months later, 21-year-old Guglielmo Marconi
began his historic experiments on his father's Italian estate.
Prior to late 1912, there were no laws or regulations
restricting amateur radio transmitters in the United States. The industrialized northeast quickly became congested with a
mixture of competing amateur and commercial stations, and it was the amateur operators who sometimes dominated the airwaves,
as recounted in Irving Vermilya's Amateur Number One, from the February and March, 1917 issues of QST magazine. (Vermilya
came from the ranks of a group which provided a number of the earliest radio enthusiasts -- amateurs operating private telegraph
lines, who wanted to expand their range without the bother of having to ask the "Mr. Taylors" of the world for permission
to string their wires. Amateur Telegraphers, from the August 6, 1892 Electrical Review, reviewed a plan in Cranford, New Jersey
to interconnect 30 locations by telegraph lines.) Although most amateur enthusiasts were male, in 1911 a young woman, who
worked as a landline telegrapher but hoped to someday become a shipboard radio operator, joined the New York City-area airwaves.
Her personal review of early radio, The Autobiography of a Girl Amateur, appeared anonymously in the March, 1920 Radio Amateur
News. The Feminine Wireless Amateur, from the October, 1916 The Electrical Experimenter reviewed female amateur and professional
radio operators.
It was difficult at first for amateur experimenters to find technical information about radio.
In Hertzian Waves, the November, 1901 issue of a mechanical and electrical hobbyist magazine, Amateur Work, included construction
information for a simple transmitter and receiver, similar to what Heinrich Hertz had used. Another early resource was How
to Construct An Efficient Wireless Telegraph Apparatus at Small Cost, by A. Frederick Collins, from the February 15, 1902
Scientific American Supplement -- in 1917, Donald McNicol reported that within the United States "this article did more
to introduce the art of amateur radio than anything else that had appeared". Many early amateurs were young, and most
built their own spark-transmitters and receivers. In Amateur Work's June, 1904 issue, "Wireless" Telegraph Plant
By Amateur Work Readers showcased the efforts of two Boston, Massachusetts 8th graders, who had built a set capable of covering
eight miles (12.8 kilometers). And the September, 1906 Technical World Magazine included an article by M. W. Hall, Wireless
Station in Henhouse, which featured the activities of two Rhode Island teenagers. Over time radio technology became more refined,
and an eight-part series beginning in the September, 1916 Popular Science Monthly, How to Become a Wireless Operator by T.
M. Lewis, provided detailed plans for constructing a tuned spark transmitter and crystal detector receiver.
HUGO
GERNSBACK
One of the first companies to sell affordable radio equipment to experimenters and amateurs was the Electro
Importing Company of New York City, set up in 1904 by Hugo Gernsback, an 18-year-old immigrant from Luxembourg. Beginning
in 1905, this company sold what may have been the first complete radio system -- including both a simple transmitter and receiver
-- offered to hobbyists on a national scale, under the name of Telimco Wireless Telegraph Outfits. The first national advertisement
for Telimco outfits -- possibly the first-ever advertisement by a company offering an inexpensive complete radio system to
non-professionals -- appeared in the November 25, 1905 issue of Scientific American. The Electro Importing offerings were
later expanded, and in a 1910 catalog, which featured "Everything for the Experimenter", the company claimed it
was "the largest makers of experimental Wireless Material in the world". The basic Telimco systems, plus other radio
transmitting and receiving equipment, are included in a 1910 extract from Electro Importing Company: Catalogue No. 7.
Hugo Gernsback would continue to be one of amateur radio's strongest proponents during its first years. In addition
to the radio equipment sold through his Electro Importing Company, Gernsback started three magazines with large amateur followings
-- Modern Electrics in 1908, The Electrical Experimenter in 1913, and Radio Amateur News in 1919. He also claimed credit for
coming up with the idea of assigning amateurs to 200 meters, dating to an Editorial which appeared in the February, 1912 issue
of Modern Electrics. Gernsback's other accomplishments were recounted in a rousing review which closes with "Long
live the Wireless! Long live the Amateur!!": Wireless and the Amateur: A Retrospect, from the February, 1913 Modern Electrics.
And the 1914 Electro Importing catalog included A Sermon To Parents, written by Gernsback, which predicted that "Electricity
and Wireless are the coming, undreamed of, world-moving forces" and were also the perfect hobby, because "It Keeps
Your Boy At Home". (At least it did in most cases. Gernsback may have been unaware of "an up-to-date band of rogues"
whose run-in with the law was recounted in Wireless Telegraphy Used by Boy Burglars, from the July 27, 1909 The Atlanta Constitution.)
