The Browni TR-603 Transistor Radio1961
The transistor radio was invented in 1949 to replace vacuum tubes.
The Radio
1949
The Oldest Boomer is 3 years old
Median Family Income: $4,100 Minimum Wage 40 cents/hr
Gallon of Milk: 82 cents Gallon of Gasoline: 27 cents
New Car: Buick Special: $1,945. Ford Custom: $1,472.
Loaf of Bread: 14 cents. Ivory Soap: 27 cents/2 bars. Pepsi-Cola: 22 cents/6 bottles. First-class Stamp 3 cents.
From the book BOOMERS How We Changed The World by Richard A. Jordan
PATRICK ELLISWHUR RADIO
Record Row Pt. 4 Documentary of major Chicago Soul labels
I don’t remember how old I was the first time my grandfather put his heavy crystal set headphones over my ears and I heard an announcer speaking clearly from station KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But I know that changed my life. It was absolutely astonishing to me that someone could be speaking hundreds of miles away and his voice would travel through the air right into our house at 452 Chelmsford Street. Sometimes it’s pretty hard for me to believe that in my lifetime I’ve gone from listening to that single voice on a crystal set to appearing live and in full color in homes around the world standing next to a skinny guy form Nebraska who is dressed as an old woman and keeps hitting me in the crotch with a cane. Now that’s progress. My grandfather had the very best, if not the first, crystal antenna on the roof to catch the signal, he wrapped aerial wire around the house. Fifty years later auto manufacturers began doing the same thing. If you didn’t live through the birth of radio it isn’t possible to appreciate its impact. Radio changed the way we lived. For the first time we were able to learn what was happening anywhere in the world almost immediately; we were able to hear the actual voices of the president of the United States and the most famous performers, people like Al Jolson and Rudy Vallee, and we were able to be entertained in our own homes. Cigar box crystal set radios very quickly evolved into beautiful pieces of furniture. They were built into elegantly carved wooden cabinets. The radio became the focal point of the room. At night I would lie on my stomach on the floor and look at the radio and imagine what I was hearing. Sound effects were used to replace pictures. A whole new form of entertainment had to be created to fill the needs of radio. Amos’n’ Andy, with white actors playing black characters, became the very first situation comedy. It was so popular that when it was being broadcast live, entertainments like vaudeville and moving pictures would stop and a radio would be wheeled onstage so the audience could listen to the show. Otherwise no one would leave their homes when these shows were on the air. That’ how powerful radio was. Comedians like Jack Benny began using the people who worked on their shows as comic foils: Benny’s cast of characters included his bandleader, Phil Harris, who was supposedly a big drinker and party guy; Dennis Day, the boy singer who was always impeccably dressed; his large-sized announcer, Don Wilson, who laughed too loud at the boss’s jokes and ate too much; and Rochester, Benny’s chauffeur and valet, who was constantly insulting him. Apparently while I was lying on the floor of the house with my chin propped in my hands in Lowell, Massachusetts, listening to The Jack Benny Show, Johnny Carson was lying on the floor of his house with his chin propped in his hands in Lincoln, Nebraska, doing exactly the same thing, because years later he created his own broadcasting family.
From the book FOR LAUGHING OUT LOUD BY Ed McMahon with David Fisber and an introduction by Johnny Carson
Great inside stuff, lots of laughs, great book, real cool.
Back in the Day: the Radio was King.
THE VOICE OF RADIO
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OLDIES BUT GOODIES
Vintage Console Stereo, Hi Fi, and Radios 1920s to 1967
Scott Jarret – The Image of You – A Melvin Lindsey tribute – host of the Quiet Storm radio program Smokey Robinson – Quiet Storm (theme of the famous radio program)
RADIO
It had been only 25 years since the world’s first telephone conversation when an event ever more astounding occurred. Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi’s reception of a transatlantic signal in 1901 marked the beginning of the wireless age. Marconi had experimented for years with wireless signals receiving a patent for a wireless telegraph in 1896. He was expanding on the work of others, such as British physicist James Clerk Maxwell, who in 1864 theorized the existence of electromagnetic waves that travel a the speed of light, and German Physicist Heinrich Hertz, who two decades later proved Maxwell right. It was then up to an inventor to find a practical use for the science. Marconi’s wireless telegraph became a valuable communication tool, especially for ships in distress. Signals sent by sinking ocean liners helped saved thousands of lives. While Marconi’s signals were transmitted in the form of telegraphic code, it was not long other engineers began figuring out how to send the human voice itself through electromagnetic waves. Marconi’ telegraph employed radio waves, or electromagnetic waves with a radio frequency (between audio and infrared on the spectrum). The invention of vacuum tubes in the early 1900s improved the detection and amplification of radio waves, and in 1906 Canadian physicist Reginald Fessenden made the first radio broadcast of voice and music-from Massachusetts to ships in the Atlantic Ocean. The era of radio had begun. Woodrow Wilson, speaking to his troops in 1919, became the first U.S. President to broadcast on the radio. Commercial radio stations started up in the 1920s, and the middle of that decade saw the beginnings of a golden age of radio broadcasting that was to last until well after World War II. news, family entertainment, and soap operas kept listeners tuning in. Programs featured such popular entertainers as Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and the comedy duo of George Burns and Gracie Allen. That was radio’s heyday, before the television entered people’s living rooms and they could watch their favorite characters move and gesture and see the locations of different shows instead of imagining them. During the second half of the 20th century, radio had a new role playing rock and roll. Top 40 lists, new releases, weather, traffic reports, and interviews became reasons Americans tuned in.
From the National Geographic book An Uncommon History of Common Things by Bethanne Patrick and John Thompson
OL’ SKOOK STYLE 93 WKYS-Extend Play Old School FM Washington, DC
WMAL Radio Washington DC
Radio
The Al Benson Show
Wolfman Jack At WNBC
Oldies Radio
1959
The Oldest Boomer is 13 years old.
Cost of the Average House: $12,400.
Median Family Income: $4,400.
Minimum Wage: $1.00\hr.
Cigarettes: 25 cents/ pack
Coca-Cola: 6.5 oz. 5 cents
New Car: Buick LeSabre $1,495/ Cadillac convertible: $5,400 Chervolet Implala: $3,451
Gallon of Gasoline: 31 cents
January 3, 1959 –Alaska becomes the 49th State.
August 21, 1959 – Hawaii becomes the 50th State.
1959 Radio: Disk jockey payola scandals smear radio broadcasting. The acceptance of cash or gifts for radio airplays of songs flourished among rock ’n’ roll disc jockeys. Independent labels recording rock had broken the stranglehold CoLumbia, RCA and Decca, had on the industry.
1959- NBC offers a western in color. “Bonanza’ will continue to run for 14 years.
1959- January 12, 1959 – Berry Gordy, Jr. founds Motown Records in Detroit. Berry Gordy, moves black urban music into mainstream pop culture.
Dragnet “the Big Impossible” Jack Webb NBC 3/15/1953
In 1947, virtually everything the industry knew about television, radio taught us.
Buffalo Bob Smith
Everybodys Somebodys Fool – The Very Best Of Connie Francis 1959-1961 [ORIGINAL RECORDINGS REMASTERED] 2CD SET
