April 7, 2015 (Tuesday)
Surfing the web yesterday landed me on a wonderful site of Old Time Radio shows. The web site is actually a catalog of mp3 files that can be purchased. A sample of each show is free for the listening. I tuned in to an old Bing Crosby radio show from the late 1940’s. Bing’s guest was Al Jolson. The pair sang some of their greatest hits and enjoyed each other with comical banter. I used to listen to the show when I was in high school. Jolson became a regular. Television was coming onto the scene, and these types of radio programs were seeing their last days.
Ten to twenty years earlier, radio was supreme in every home that could afford a set. We had a great big console radio with a huge speaker, and I (8 or 9 years old) parked myself squarely in front of that huge speaker. We heard the shows every night: Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Lux presents Hollywood, Gangbusters, Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd, Red Skelton and the mean ‘widdle kid, Amos and Andy, and on and on. It was the heyday of the am radio industry. No fm in those days.
During those years, the morning shows like Kate Smith and Dinah Shore, the noonday shows like the Chuck Wagon Gang and the Light Crust Doughboys, and the endless parade of afternoon soap operas entertained the country. I remember my grandmother would let nothing come between her and “Stella Dallas.” Every show was sponsored by laundry soap of some kind–hence, the name, “soap opera.” I suppose the word, “opera,”
was used because of the melodramatic emphasis of the art. The “Western” had become known as “horse opera” in the 1920’s. The genre transitioned to TV with success until it died sometime around the 1960’s. Some later prime-time shows such as “Dallas” were known to be glorified soaps.
The radio dials are full of stations these days, but the old-time programs are gone. Music seems to be the central theme, with a touch of news. FM Stereo is the preferred mode, with quadrophonic and you-name-it as added features. One of the best ways to listen today is via the satellite radio, which never fades as you drive clear across the country, and offers such a wide variety of genres that you can always tune into something you like to hear.