by Pa Rock
Radio Listener
Back in the 1950’s Marilyn Monroe sought to energize her
acting career by posing nude for a calendar.
Facing reporters not long afterward, she was asked by one grinning
inquisitor, “Marilyn, what did you have on during the photo shoot?” to which
the coy actress replied, “The radio.”
And that was probably a true statement because radio had a prominent
place in American society from the 1920’s through the 1950’s.
Some of my earliest memories are of listening to radio
programs with my mother in the evenings as we waited for my dad to get home
from work. We had a large wooden radio
that stood on the floor and was about three feet tall. In those pre-television days, that radio was
a natural gathering point in the house.
Mom liked “Inner Sanctum,” as eerie precursor of such television
programs as “The Twilight Zone” and “The Outer Limits.” I was more into the comedies and remember
well the antics of “Our Miss Brooks” and “Fibber McGee and Molly” among many
others
Most of the really good radio programs were gone by the
1960’s, but we still had that big old radio (it was in my room by then), and it
consumed my evenings with popular music and a sense of independence from the
television that tended to keep the rest of the family in the living room. I listened to two very powerful a.m. radio
stations. My favorite station was WLS
out of Chicago whose transmitter was able to reach much of the central United
States. It was a loud and very clear
channel that made the station’s main evening disc jockey, Dick Biondi, a
household name among me and many of my friends.
I also liked WHB in Kansas City.
One of their most prominent disc jockeys was a fellow named Bob Hale.
A local radio station in Springfield, Missouri, KICK,
provided the musical backdrop for my college years. I knew people who knew people at KICK, and
was at the station on several occasions.
In fact, I even remember (barely) being there the night of my 21st
birthday.
But in the years after college, as I matured and the
connection between me and contemporary music began to blur with age, I lost
interest in radio – at least until “oldies” programs and stations began
emerging in the 1980’s. Music those
stations classified as “oldies” constituted, in large measure, the soundtrack
of my youth. A friend once described
music of that era as being songs a person could actually sing along with.
Now the age of “oldies” programs seems to have also slipped
by, although 80-year-old Dick Biondi, the “wild I-talian” apparently still
broadcasts an “oldies” program out of Chicago.
(Hang in there, old man!) But as
that door closed, another opened.
Fifteen years or so ago I discovered Garrison Keillor’s
wonderful “A Prairie Home Companion” which airs on most NPR stations every
Saturday evening for two hours – and is usually repeated on Sunday mornings. Keillor modeled his show on radio’s iconic
“Grand Ole Opry.” It is a special blend
of folk music, humor, radio drama, poetry, and a variety of other things that
the host (Keillor) opts to throw into the entertainment mix. Some
of his fictional sponsors include the “National Catsup Advisory Board,” the “Professional
Organization of English Majors (P.O.E.M.),” “Bertha’s Kitty Boutique,” and
“Bee-Bop-A-Ree-Bop Rhubarb Pie.”
“A Prairie Home Companion” is based out of the Fitzgerald
Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota, but it also travels from city-to-city much of
the year. It is always performed before
a live audience who hoot and holler at the performances and are sometimes
invited to sing along with the performers.
Political discourse on the program is decidedly liberal and always
funny.
Regular features on “A Prairie Home Companion” include
“Tales of the Cowboys,” the chronicles of Dusty and Lefty – two cowboys who are
endlessly herding cattle to cities where the show just happens to be playing,
“The Adventures of Guy Noir,” a low brow detective whose cases will never
elevate him into the big leagues of private detection, and Keillor’s signature
monologue “The News from Lake Woebegon,” an hilarious send-up of the quirky
characters and oddball situations that arise in Keillor’s fictional hometown
where “the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and the children are
above average.”
“A Prairie Home Companion” is really good radio.
Radio and I have both changed over the years, and although
some might regard us as increasingly irrelevant, we both have our moments. Getting to them just requires patience, careful listening, and an occasional bit of fine-tuning.
