Frank Beacham's Journal

The original Amos ‘n’ Andy radio show debuted in Chicago on this day in 1926 — 97 years ago

The original Amos ‘n’ Andy radio show debuted in Chicago on this day in 1926 — 97 years ago.

The two-man comedy series, "Sam 'n' Henry," appeared on Chicago's WGN radio station. Two years later, after changing its name to "Amos 'n' Andy," the show became one of the most popular radio programs in American history. 

The creators and the stars of the new radio program, Freeman Gosden and Charles Carrell, were both white. Yet, the characters they played were two black men from the Deep South who moved to Chicago to seek their fortunes.

By that time, white actors performing in dark stage makeup — or "blackface" — had been a significant tradition in American theater for over 100 years.

Gosden and Carrell, both vaudeville performers, were doing a Chicago comedy act in blackface when an employee at the Chicago Tribune suggested they create a radio show. When "Sam 'n' Henry" debuted in January, 1926, it became an immediate hit. In 1928, Gosden and Carrell took their act to a rival station, the Chicago Daily News' WMAQ.

When they discovered WGN owned the rights to their characters' names, they simply changed them. As their new contract gave Gosden and Carrell the right to syndicate the program, the popularity of "Amos 'n' Andy" soon exploded.

Over the next 22 years, the show would become the highest-rated comedy in radio history — attracting more than 40 million listeners.

By 1951, when "Amos 'n' Andy" came to television, changing attitudes about race and concerns about racism had virtually wiped out the practice of blackface.

With Alvin Childress and Spencer Williams taking over for Gosden and Carrell, the show was the first TV series to feature an all-black cast and the only one of its kind for the next 20 years.

This did not stop African-American advocacy groups and eventually the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from criticizing both the radio and TV versions of "Amos 'n' Andy" for promoting racial stereotypes. These protests led to the TV show's cancellation in 1953.

The final radio broadcast of "Amos 'n' Andy" aired on November 25, 1960.

The following year, Gosden and Carrell created a short-lived TV sequel called "Calvin and the Colonel." This time, they avoided controversy by replacing the human characters with an animated fox and bear. The show was canceled after one season.

Here a scene from Amos ‘N” Andy in the 1950s

Thanks History.com

Alvin Childress, Spencer Williams and other black performers joined the television cast of Amos 'n' Andy in the 1950s

Soupy Sales was born 97 years ago today

Soup Sales, 2066

Photo by Frank Beacham

Soupy Sales was born 97 years ago today.

A comedian, actor, radio-TV personality and jazz aficionado, Sales was best known for his local and network children's television show, Lunch with Soupy Sales. He did a series of comedy sketches frequently ending with Sales receiving a pie in the face, which became his trademark.

From 1968 to 1975, he was a regular panelist on the syndicated revival of What's My Line? and appeared on several other TV game shows. During the 1980s, Sales hosted his own show on WNBC-AM in New York City.

Sales was born Milton Supman in Franklinton in Franklin County, North Carolina. His father, a dry goods merchant, had immigrated to America from Hungary in 1894. His was the only Jewish family in the town. Sales joked that local Ku Klux Klan members bought the sheets used for their robes from his father's store.

Sales got his nickname from his family. His older brothers had been nicknamed "Hambone" and "Chicken Bone." Milton was dubbed "Soup Bone," which was later shortened to "Soupy."

When he became a disc jockey, he began using the stage name Soupy Hines. After he became established, it was decided that "Hines" was too close to the Heinz soup company, so he chose the Sales, in part after vaudeville comedian, Chic Sale.

Sales graduated from Huntington High School in Huntington, West Virginia in 1944. He then enlisted in the United States Navy and served on the USS Randall in the South Pacific during the latter part of World War II.

He sometimes entertained his shipmates by telling jokes and playing crazy characters over the ship's public address system. One of the characters he created was "White Fang," a large dog that played outrageous practical jokes on the seamen. The sounds for "White Fang" came from a recording of "The Hound of the Baskervilles."

Sales enrolled in Marshall College in Huntington, where he earned a Master's Degree in Journalism. While at Marshall, he performed in nightclubs as a comedian, singer and dancer.

After graduating, Sales began working as a scriptwriter and disc jockey at radio station WHTN (now WVHU) in Huntington. He moved to Cincinnati, Ohio in 1949, where he worked as a morning radio DJ and performed in nightclubs.

Sales began his television career on WKRC-TV in Cincinnati with Soupy's Soda Shop, TV's first teen dance program, and Club Nothing!, a late-night comedy/variety program.

When WKRC canceled his TV shows, Sales moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he hosted another radio and TV series and continued his nightclub act. It was in a skit on his late night comedy/variety TV series Soupy's On! that he got his first pie in the face.

Sales is best known for his daily children's television show, Lunch With Soupy. The show was originally called 12 O'Clock Comics, and was later known as The Soupy Sales Show.

Improvised and slapstick in nature, Lunch with Soupy Sales was a rapid-fire stream of comedy sketches, gags and puns, almost all of which resulted in Sales receiving a pie in the face.

Sales developed pie-throwing into an art form: straight to the face, on top of the head, a pie to both ears from behind, moving into a stationary pie, and countless other variations.

He claimed that he and his visitors had been hit by more than 20,000 pies during his career.

Sales died in 2009 at the age of 83.

Here, Soupy gets in a pie throwing match with Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack.

Soupy Sales: A Personal Story

As a kid, I was surrounded by the television characters who defined the fledgling medium in the 1950s. As an adult, I was lucky enough to meet many of them and, in some cases, become their friends.

Lew Anderson, the bandleader who was Clarabell on the Howdy Doody Show from 1954 to 1960, was one who became a friend. As a first grader, I joined other kids in chasing him to the roof of a TV station during a personal appearance. In later years, he sought me out after I wrote an obit on his old boss, Buffalo Bob Smith.

I began to visit with Lew each week at Birdland, where he led his big band. I’d usually sit with a bunch of old time 50s television directors and performers who gathered to hear and tell old war stories. I, of course, ate it all up.

This group usually included Soupy Sales, Lew’s close friend and himself a television legend. Soupy, a jazz lover, would order martinis in glasses the size of small fish bowls and hold court on the countless ways to throw pies in the human face. The man was incredibly funny and we all laughed endlessly.

Those were wonderful times. To hear your childhood myths debunked in such hilarious “shop talk” is one pleasure I will never forget.

After years of experimenting, a radio transmitter at Brant Rock, on the Massachusetts coast, sent out the first clearly heard broadcast 116 years ago tonight

Until 1906, listening to the radio was a very dull experience. The medium was used only as a way to transmit Morse code through the air — with the dots and dashes spoken as “di,” dit” and “dah.”

A scientist who saw bigger possibilities was Reginald Fessenden, an electrical engineer who was working for the United States Weather Bureau at the turn of the century. The bureau’s goal was to send forecasts using signals, like Morse code, over the airwaves. That proved to be frustrating for Fessenden.

Fessenden aimed for more, such as transmitting sound waves to carry human voices. He was able to turn those sound waves into electric waves and lay them upon existing radio waves. These were the first radio waves to carry signals for a range of sound.

After years of experimenting, a transmitter at Brant Rock, on the Massachusetts coast, sent out the first clearly heard broadcast 116 years ago tonight.

The hourlong radio program, heard by ships at sea, began at 9 p.m. Eastern time. The broadcast included seasonal Bible readings, Fessenden’s own violin rendition of “O Holy Night” and a recording of Handel’s “Largo.”

Fessenden wrapped up the night by wishing his listeners a Merry Christmas.

Thanks New York Times!

Alan Freed, disc jockey known as “Moondog,” was born 100 years ago today

Alan Freed, disc jockey known as “Moondog,” was born 100 years ago today.

Freed became internationally known for promoting the mix of blues, country and rhythm and blues music on the radio in the United States and Europe under the name of rock and roll. His career was destroyed by the payola scandal that hit the broadcasting industry in the early 1960s.

Freed was born to a Russian-Jewish immigrant father, Charles S. Freed, and Welsh-American mother, Maude Palmer, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. In 1933, Freed's family moved to Salem, Ohio where Freed attended Salem High School, graduating in 1940.

While he was in high school, Freed formed a band called the Sultans of Swing in which he played the trombone. His initial ambition was to be a bandleader. However, an ear infection put an end to this dream.

While attending Ohio State University, Freed became interested in radio. He served in the Army during World War II and worked as a DJ on WKBN Armed Forces Radio. Soon after World War II, Freed landed broadcasting jobs at smaller radio stations, including WKST (New Castle, PA); WKBN (Youngstown, OH) and WAKR (Akron, OH)

In 1945, at WAKR, Freed became a local favorite for playing hot jazz and pop recordings. He enjoyed listening to these new styles because he liked the rhythms and tunes.

Freed is commonly referred to as the "father of rock and roll" due to his promotion of the style of music. He introduced the phrase "rock and roll" in reference to the musical genre on mainstream radio in the early 1950s.

Freed helped bridge the gap of segregation among young teenage Americans, presenting music by African-American artists (rather than cover versions by white artists) on his radio program. He also arranged live concerts attended by racially mixed audiences.

Freed appeared in several motion pictures as himself. In the 1956 film, Rock, Rock, Rock, Freed tells the audience that "rock and roll is a river of music that has absorbed many streams: rhythm and blues, jazz, rag time, cowboy songs, country songs and folk songs. All have contributed to the big beat."

In 1945, Alan Freed became a local favorite in Akron, playing hot jazz and pop recordings. Radio Editor for Akron Beacon Journal, followed Freed and his "Request Review" nightly program of dance.

When he left the station, the non-compete clause in his contract limited its ability to find work elsewhere, and he was forced to take the graveyard shift at Cleveland's WJW radio where he eventually made history playing the music he called "rock and roll."

In the late 1940s, while working at WAKR, Freed met Cleveland record store owner Leo Mintz. Record Rendezvous was one of Cleveland's largest record stores, who had begun selling rhythm and blues records. Mintz told Freed that he had noticed increased interest in the records at his store, and encouraged him to play them on the radio.

In 1951, Freed moved to Cleveland. With the help of William Shipley, the RCA distributor in Northern Ohio, he was released from his non-compete and joined WJW radio on a midnight radio program sponsored by Main Line, the RCA Distributor and Record Rendezvous.

Mintz proposed buying airtime on Cleveland radio station WJW (850 AM) to be devoted entirely to R&B recordings with Freed as host. On July 11, 1951, Freed started playing rhythm and blues records on WJW.

Freed called his show "The Moondog House" and billed himself as "The King of the Moondoggers." He had been inspired by an offbeat instrumental called "Moondog Symphony" that had been recorded by New York street musician Louis T. Hardin, aka "Moondog."

Freed adopted the record as his show's theme music. His on-air manner was energetic, in contrast to many contemporary radio presenters of traditional pop music, who tended to sound more subdued and low-key in manner. He addressed his listeners for their common love for black music.

Later that year, Freed promoted dances and concerts featuring the music he was playing on the radio. He was one of the organizers of a five-act show called "The Moondog Coronation Ball" on March 21, 1952 at the Cleveland Arena. This event is known as the first rock and roll concert.

Crowds attended in numbers far beyond the arena's capacity, and the concert was shut down early due to overcrowding and a near-riot. Freed gained a priceless notoriety from the incident. WJW immediately increased the airtime allotted to Freed's program, and his popularity soared.

In those days, Cleveland was considered by the music industry to be a "breakout" city, where national trends first appeared in a regional market. Freed's popularity made the pop music business sit up and take notice. Soon, tapes of Freed's program began to air in the New York City area.

In 1954, following his success on the air in Cleveland, Freed moved to WINS (1010 AM) in New York City. The station eventually became an around-the-clock Top 40 rock and roll radio station, and would remain so until April 19, 1965 — long after Freed left and three months after he had died. It then became an all-news outlet.

While in New York, Life magazine credited Freed as the originator of the rock 'n roll craze. After departing from WINS, Freed was employed in New York by WABC (770 AM) around 1958, about two years before it evolved into one of America's great Top 40 stations by launching its "Musicradio" format.

At this time, WABC (unlike rocker WINS) was more of a full-service station which began implementing some music programming elements.

In 1957, Freed was given a weekly prime-time TV series, The Big Beat (which predated American Bandstand), on ABC, which was scheduled for a Summer run, with the understanding that if there were enough viewers, the show would continue into the 1957-58 television season.

Although the ratings for the first three episodes were strong, the show was suddenly canceled after the fourth episode. During that episode, Frankie Lymon of Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers, after performing his number, was seen dancing with a white girl from the studio audience.

Reportedly, the incident offended the management of ABC's local affiliates in the southern states, and led to the show's immediate cancellation despite its growing popularity.

Freed's career ended when it was shown that he had accepted payola (payments from record companies to play specific records), a practice that was highly controversial at the time.

There was also a conflict of interest. He had taken songwriting co-credits (most notably on Chuck Berry's "Maybellene"), which entitled him to receive part of a song's royalties. This could help increase play and his fee by heavily promoting the record on his own program.

In 1962, Freed pleaded guilty to two charges of commercial bribery, for which he received a fine and a suspended sentence. Freed's punishment from the payola scandal was not severe. However, the side effects of negative publicity were such that no prestigious station would employ him. He moved to the West Coast in 1960, where he worked at KDAY/1580 in Santa Monica.

In 1962, after KDAY refused to allow him to promote "rock and roll" stage shows, Freed moved to WQAM in Miami, Florida. That association lasted only two months. During 1964, he returned to the Los Angeles area and worked at KNOB/97.9.

He died in a Palm Springs hospital on January 20, 1965 from uremia and cirrhosis brought on by alcoholism. He was 43 years old.

Freed was initially buried in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. His ashes were later moved to their present location in Cleveland, Ohio at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 21, 2002.

On January 23, 1986, Freed was part of the first group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which was built in Cleveland in recognition of Freed's involvement in the promotion of the genre. In 1988, he was also posthumously inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame. On December 10, 1991, Freed was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Here is Alan Freed appearing on “To Tell the Truth”

Geraldine Fitzgerald, an Irish-American actress, was born 109 years ago today

In the photos, Geraldine Fitzgerald; Fitzgerald with Orson Welles in the Mercury Theatre production of Heartbreak House, 1938; Michael Lindsay-Hogg; and Orson Welles

Geraldine Fitzgerald, an Irish-American actress, was born 109 years ago today.

Fitzgerald was born in Greystones, County Wicklow, south of Dublin, the daughter of Edith and Edward Fitzgerald, who was an attorney. She studied painting at the Dublin School of Art. Inspired by her aunt, the actress/director Shelah Richards, Fitzgerald began her acting career in 1932 in theatre in her native Dublin before moving to London.

She quickly came to be regarded as one of the British film industry's most promising young performers and her most successful film of this period was The Mill on the Floss (1937).

Her success led her to America and Broadway in 1938, and while appearing opposite Orson Welles in the Mercury Theatre production of Heartbreak House, she was seen by the film producer, Hal B. Wallis, who signed her to a seven-year film contract.

She achieved two significant successes in 1939: a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Isabella Linton in Wuthering Heights and an important role in Dark Victory. Both films achieved great box office success.

She appeared in Shining Victory (1941), The Gay Sisters (1942) and Watch on the Rhine (1943) for Warner Bros., and Wilson (1944) for Fox. But her career was hampered by her frequent clashes with the management of the studio.

Fitzgerald was the mother of the TV, film and theater director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (Let It Be and Brideshead Revisited). Her son's resemblance to Orson Welles, with whom she had worked and been linked with romantically in the late 1930s, led to rumors Welles was the boy's father.

In the late 1980s, I interviewed Fitzgerald at her east side apartment in New York City about Welles and her remembrances of acting with him. I asked her about the rumors that Welles was the real father of Michael Lindsey-Hogg. She denied it.

But in his 2011 autobiography — Luck and Circumstance: A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York, and Points Beyond — Lindsay-Hogg reported that his mother's friend, Gloria Vanderbilt, had revealed that Welles was his natural father. However, Lindsay-Hogg’s failure to promote the book led to doubts about how solid the story is.

Lindsay-Hogg became a pioneer in music video production, directing promotional films and music videos for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He conceived The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, featuring the Stones and other musicians playing in a circus atmosphere.

Following his work with these bands, he branched out into film and theater, while still maintaining successful careers in television and music video production.

During the 1980s, he returned to directing concert films, including Simon and Garfunkel's The Concert in Central Park, Neil Young's Neil Young in Berlin and Paul Simon, Graceland: The African Concert.

Fitzgerald died at age 91 in New York City following a long battle with Alzheimer's Disease.

Arline Francis, born 115 years ago today, was a pioneer for women on television

Arlene Francis, James Cagney and Billy Wilder on the set of of the comedy film, One, Two, Three, 1961

Arlene Francis is remembered by most of us as a talk show host on WOR Radio and a game show panelist on CBS’s “What’s My Line.”

Yet Francis, who was born 115 years ago today, was a pioneer for women on television. She began her career as an actress. Active on Broadway, she acted in several films, debuting in the role of a prostitute in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), which had her falling prey to mad scientist, Bela Lugosi.

In the 1960s, Arlene Francis appeared as the wife of James Cagney in the comedy, One, Two, Three (1961), directed by Billy Wilder and filmed on location in Munich.

She also made The Thrill of It All (1963) and the television version of the play, Laura (1968), which she had played on stage several times.

In her earliest days, Francis worked on stage and on radio with Orson Welles. I did an audio documentary in the late 1980s with Leonard Maltin about actors who had worked with Welles.

In February, 1988, Francis gave me an interview and I visited her New York City apartment. She was a charming and very friendly lady. We talked in her living room.

Welles “was very imaginative and his manner of forcefulness in what he had to say was powerful. I mean you just had to pay attention and I think it was one of the first times radio had heard anybody with that kind of positive, able, brilliance in his introduction to a play or into his understanding of the part that he was playing. He was always Orson, I will say that. Very few people argued with Orson about anything, I noticed,” said Francis.

“I noticed mostly because I wouldn't have dared, but I mean mostly they just took his word for it, although he was always open to suggestions and talks and so forth....and I remember one time when his first wife, Virginia, said 'I don't happen to think that's the right way to do that.' And he said, 'But I do.'

And she had an ice cream soda in her hand in a container and she just threw it at him in front of the whole company. He just mopped it up and they went on working...” (laughter)

As the infamous "War of the Worlds" aired on radio on October 30, 1938, Francis was in rehearsals for Welles' stage production of "Danton's Death." She remembers Welles arriving at the theatre after the broadcast.

“And so we used to rehearse at the theatre until midnight or later and Orson came from that broadcast and he burst into....we were all waiting for him....he burst into the auditorium and said: 'I don't know what's going to happen. The police are gonna be after me. I know all hell has broken loose now because of the fact that I had this 'War of the Worlds' done so well that they really thought it was going on.

“And he couldn't believe the reaction to it....none of us could. But we all stayed there a long time and he was talking about it."

He said "it was nothing, they made such a big thing out of nothing. How could they do that? How are people so so silly as to believe the thing like that? In the first place, they hear my voice. They don't think I'm gonna be the one to announce the war between the worlds."

The rest, they say, is history.

Francis died at age 93 on May 31, 2001 in San Francisco. Her death was attributed to Alzheimer's disease and cancer.

Below, Arlene Francis on NBC’s Home, 1957

Personal Memories of Charlie Moore

Personal Memories of Charlie Moore

I was in the tenth grade of high school when I ventured one Saturday to the local radio station, WHPB, in nearby Belton, South Carolina. It was a few minutes drive from my home in Honea Path and I drove my old 1942 Willys army jeep to the station parking lot. 

Being the weekend, there was only one person there — the on-air DJ — who was doing his shift. Through the glass control room window facing the outer lobby, he motioned me inside.

I introduced myself. He was a friendly fellow and introduced himself as Charlie Moore. It was a quiet time at the studio and he engaged me in conversation. I told him I was in high school and wanted to work in radio part-time.

“How do I get a job here?” I asked.

Learn the ropes, Charlie responded. Then he handed me the opportunity of a lifetime. I was welcome to hang out and watch what he did. Maybe if I picked enough skills, I could get hired at the station. That’s all I needed to hear.

Every weekend in the following weeks, I joined Charlie Moore on his shift. I learned a few things about him that I used to my advantage. When he wasn’t working at the radio station, Charlie was on the road singing bluegrass music. 

Musicians made very little money performing in those days and Charlie needed the salary from the radio job, as well as the station’s studio facilities to record his music.

I also noted that Charlie was always tired and was taking amphetamine pills. I soon learned that if I could run the audio board and play the records, it would allow Charlie to lie on the couch and take catnaps between records.

I had found my entrée into radio. 

I became so proficient at letting Charlie sleep that I would often wake him just before he had to go on the air. I’d hold a microphone over him while he lay on the couch, and he’d introduce the next record.

I quickly won a friend in Charlie Moore, who appreciated a young kid doing all the dirty work while letting him catch a few winks. As I gained more skills, Charlie had me run the audio board and record his music in the studio.
 
Whether the station management knew or didn’t know about these recordings, I’ll never know. But on weekends, when no one else was around, the studio would suddenly fill with bluegrass musicians.

In the studio at WHPB, we had a classic RCA 44BX ribbon microphone in a small studio connected to an RCA audio board and Roberts and Magnacord reel-to-reel tape recorders. It was a similar set-up in that era to the Sun or Stax Studios where some great music was being recorded only a few hours away. 

Performers could stand all around the big microphone and sing, moving in and out as they did solo parts. I recorded hours of mono recordings of Charlie and his band members this way. 

It would be forty years later before I would learn that many of those players were members of Bill Monroe’s great band, the Blue Grass Boys. And the tapes I recorded then were made into records that are still played on jukeboxes to this day. Charlie told me very little about what was really going on.

I had completely lost touch with Charlie Moore when I began to look into his life. I was surprised at what I didn’t know. When we worked together, I knew nothing of his major musical and songwriting talent. I knew him only in the context of the radio station.

Searching on the internet, I discovered that Travers Chandler, a professional bluegrass musician whose band, Avery County, is based in the Asheville, North Carolina area, has written about Charlie Moore. In fact, Travers Chandler revers Charlie, crediting him as a major influence in his own career. I called Travers to ask about Charlie.

“When I heard him sing on Truck Drivers Queen, I knew I wanted to be a bluegrass entertainer, but even more importantly I wanted to SING like Charlie Moore,” Travers told me. 

In fact, Traver’s band, Avery County, was named as a tribute after a Charlie Moore album by the same name. Travers never knew Charlie personally, but his father did. They were drinking buddies.

When I worked with Charlie Moore at WHPB, he was in his late 20s. Only a year or two earlier, he had teamed with Bill Napier, a former member of the Clinch Mountain Boys. Moore and Napier signed a recording contract with King Records and began performing on television in Greenville and Spartanburg S.C., and in Panama City, Florida. 

I remember watching Charlie on television early in the morning before going to school. It was hard for me to grasp his grueling life and his constant working schedule. 

He would be up at 5 a.m. to do the TV show and then out in the evening to play personal appearances. On weekends, he would work at WHPB. At least I better understand why he was always tired and taking those pills.

Charlie never introduced me to the musicians I recorded, but there’s a good chance I also recorded he and Bill Napier. 

“I know there were lots of people who recorded in Belton at WHPB who were members of Bill Monroe's band. Many essential recordings of legends were made in places like Belton, and at little radio stations in Virginia and North Carolina,” Travers told me. 

“I know that Carl Story recorded some there in the 1960s and there’s a good chance that you recorded a bunch of stuff there that ended up on vinyl that people seek out today. I have to believe that Charlie had a hand in it, because Charlie and Carl were tight at one time,” Travers continued. 

“You didn't know then what you were part of. It was legendary. At that time, musicians were starving to death. The tapes recorded at the radio stations would be sent to the record labels by the artists they were working with and would be pressed and released. Typically as 45s. A lot of times, it was just a wink and nod with the stations. Sometimes the stations were fine with it.”

At the time a lot of bands were working out of radio stations. In the late 50s and early 60s, bluegrass music almost perished. If an artist was making a record, it was on a shoestring budget type deal where little or no money was provided for recording or expenses or anything else. 

Travers told me that even Bill Monroe didn't make much money in those days. “Bill was a stubborn man. He had a painful childhood. He was guarded in everything he did. He didn't trust anybody. And he was not a businessman. It wasn’t until the mid to late 1960s that he trusted someone enough to be his manager did he make any money. 

“As to his band, back in those days it was a lot of swap and go. In the early 60s, somebody would leave the Stanley Brothers and go to work with Charlie and Bill Napier. Then they’d go work for Monroe or Stanley, then they’d get tired of that and come back. That’s just the way it was.”

Charlie Moore was close friends with Carter Stanley, one of the Stanley Brothers. “Carter was Charlie’s idol. Charlie wanted to be just like Carter. Both went out the same way. Carter drank himself to death at 41. Charlie drank himself to death at 44,” Travers said.
 
“When Charlie and Bill Napier broke up in about 1968, Charlie went to radio full time and became an MC at bluegrass shows and festivals. Charlie remained tight with everybody. He was friends with Ralph Stanley.” 

Travers said he talked with Ralph Stanley about Charlie. “Ralph said my brother and Charlie Moore were the two greatest songwriters I've ever seen.” 

Ironically, the great James Brown, who was also on King Records, ran the audio board for Charlie and Bill Napier in the Cincinnati, Ohio studio in the early days. 

“Charlie would arrive at King and have to record 12 songs and wouldn't have any material,” Travers said. “Charlie was worn out. There was a coffee shop across the street and Charlie and Bill would go over there, sit down, and Charlie would write songs on a napkin. In an hour or so, he'd have 10 or 12 songs and they'd go the studio and work with the band. Bill Napier would come up with the melody and then they’d cut the record.”

In the mid 1970s, Charlie continued to struggle in the U.S. but began to find a following in Europe in places like Belgium, France and Holland. His luck, however, ran out. 

He began drinking heavily and looked old and frail by his early 40s. Charlie became ill on the way to a show in West Virginia. Taken to a hospital, he went into a coma. He died on Christmas Eve, 1979.

Ironically, Charlie Moore gave me an entry into an industry that became my life’s work, but I never knew his story until I hit my 60s. I only knew him as an incredibly nice guy who took the time to help a kid. Little did I know that he was a brilliant songwriter and musician and would leave behind stacks of unrecorded songs. 

Bluegrass musician Jimmy Martin told Travers Chandler that Charlie Moore was one of the greatest singers ever in bluegrass and country music. Charlie could have been a country star in the 1960s, Martin said, but he refused to stray from what called his old time “hillbilly” music.

“Charlie almost came along at the wrong time,” Travis noted. “There was money to be made in those days. But he was always a step behind. It was a hard luck career.”

My work at WHPB won me a South Carolina State Broadcasters Association scholarship to the University of South Carolina. It was my ticket out of the tiny town of Honea Path. 

After I left in 1966, I never spoke to Charlie Moore again. It took nearly 43 years for me to learn his story.

Frank Beacham at WHPB Radio

Charlie Moore

Charlie Moore performs “Over in Glory Land”

Actress Helen Hayes was born 122 years ago today

Actress Helen Hayes was born 122 years ago today.

Hayes’ career spanned almost 80 years. She eventually garnered the nickname, "First Lady of the American Theatre." She was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award (an EGOT).

Hayes also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor, from President Ronald Reagan in 1986.

In 1988, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. The annual Helen Hayes Awards, which have recognized excellence in professional theatre in the greater Washington, D.C. area since 1984, are her namesake.

In 1955, the former Fulton Theatre on 46th Street in New York City's Broadway Theater District was renamed the Helen Hayes Theatre. When that venue was torn down in 1982, the nearby Little Theatre was renamed in her honor.

In the late 1980s, I had a memorable telephone encounter with Hayes. I wanted to do an interview with her about Orson Welles for my “Mercury Company Remembers” documentary.

Apparently, she was having memory problems the day I called, since she did not recognize that Welles had died a couple of years earlier.

Her response to my request: “You tell that Orson Welles that I will not do the documentary. He wouldn’t help me on my project in 1940, and I won’t help him with his.”

She then slammed the phone down. End of conversation.

Hayes died on St. Patrick's Day, 1993 from congestive heart failure in Nyack, New York.

Lillian Gish had designated Hayes as beneficiary of her estate, but Hayes survived her by less than a month.

In 2011, Hayes was honored with a U.S. postage stamp.

James Whitmore, actor, was born 101 years ago today

James Whitmore playing South Carolina Governor Robert McNair and Robert Rockwell playing S. C. Attorney General Dan McLeod. The recording was done in Whitmore’s living room.

Photo by Frank Beacham

James Whitmore, actor, was born 101 years ago today.

Whitmore won a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy Award, and was nominated for two Academy Awards for many great films.

I had a chance to work with Whitmore, who played Gov. Robert McNair in my radio drama, The Orangeburg Massacre.

Ironically, McNair himself, who hated being portrayed at all, respected Whitmore and was a fan of Harry!, his one-man show on Harry Truman, for which Whitmore was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.

McNair met with me, probably because he wanted to know more about working with Whitmore than anything else.

In case you didn’t know, The Orangeburg Massacre is the story of the killing of three black S.C. State College students by white highway patrol in Orangeburg, S.C in 1968. McNair and other state officials covered up the murders.

In his later years, Whitmore did commercials for “Miracle Grow” plant food. In his yard, he always posed with beautiful flowers in the ads.

Since we recorded the show at his home in Malibu Canyon, I was amazed to learn that those commercials were actually shot there and the plants in his yard were real. Whitmore, an engaging man, showed me his flowers and told me he really used Miracle Grow on them. It worked, he said.

Whitmore was diagnosed with lung cancer in November, 2008, from which he died at the age of 87 on February 6, 2009 at his Malibu home.

John Henry Faulk was born 109 years ago today

John Henry Faulk was born 109 years ago today.

From Austin, Texas, Faulk was a storyteller and radio show host who filed a successful lawsuit that helped to bring an end to the Hollywood blacklist in the entertainment industry.

Faulk enrolled in the University of Texas in 1932. He became a protégé of J. Frank Dobie, Walter Prescott Webb and Roy Bedichek, enabling Faulk to hone his skills as a folklorist. He earned a Master's degree in Folklore, with his thesis, "Ten Negro Sermons.”

He further began to craft his oratory style as a part-time English teacher at the University 1940–1942, relating Texas folk tales peppered with his gift of character impersonations.

Faulk enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1944, serving at Camp Swift, Texas as a medic. It was during this period that Faulk joined the American Civil Liberties Union. While a soldier at Camp Swift, Faulk began writing his own radio scripts. An acquaintance got an interview for him at WCBS in New York City. The network executives were sufficiently impressed to offer him his own radio show.

Upon his 1946 discharge from the Army, Faulk began his Johnny's Front Porch radio show for WCBS. The show featured Faulk's characterizations that he had been developing since his university years. Faulk's radio career at CBS ended in 1957, a victim of the Cold War and the blacklisting of the 1950s.

AWARE, Inc., a for-profit corporation inspired by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, offered a "clearance" service to major media advertisers and radio and television networks. For a fee, AWARE would investigate the backgrounds of entertainers for signs of Communist sympathy or affiliation.

In 1955, Faulk earned the ill will of the blacklisting organization when he and other members wrested control of their union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, from officers under the backing of AWARE.

In reprisal, AWARE labeled Faulk a Communist. When he discovered that AWARE was actively keeping radio stations from offering him employment, Faulk sought compensation. Several prominent radio personalities, along with CBS News vice president Edward R. Murrow, supported Faulk's earnest attempt to put an end to blacklisting.

With financial backing from Murrow, Faulk engaged New York attorney Louis Nizer. Attorneys for AWARE, including McCarthy-committee counsel, Roy Cohn, managed to stall the suit — filed in 1957 — for five years. When the trial finally concluded in a New York courtroom, the jury determined that Faulk should receive more compensation than he sought in his original petition.

On June 28, 1962, the jury awarded him the largest libel judgment in history to that date — $3.5 million. An appeals court later lowered the amount to $500,000. Legal fees and accumulated debts erased most of the balance of the award.

Faulk's book, Fear on Trial, published in 1963, tells the story of the experience. The book was remade into an Emmy award-winning TV movie in 1975 by CBS Television with William Devane portraying Faulk and George C. Scott playing Faulk's lawyer, Louis Nizer.

Other supporters in the blacklist struggle included radio pioneer and Wimberley, Texas native, Parks Johnson, and reporter and CBS television news anchor, Walter Cronkite.

John Henry Faulk died in Austin of cancer on April 9, 1990.