Old time Border Radio clips-history-please listen

Subject: RE: Old time Border Radio clips-history-please listen
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 Nov 02 - 12:23 AM

Dear Art,

Thank you! Would love to hear some more, kind sir...and from ther est of you, too.

The earliest memory I have of radio is our family listening to Gunsmoke on Saturday nights, and every Christmas listening to Lionel Barrymore reading A Christmas Carol. Somewhere my brother has a reel-to-reel of that.

kat

Subject: RE: Old time Border Radio clips-history-please listen
From: GUEST,Bardford
Date: 13 Nov 02 - 12:14 AM

Guest Q - I'm interested in hearing about the Moose Jaw angle on all of this - where did you pick up the signal? Was the music Canuck-centric? We didn't have Can-Con (Canadian Content) regulations back then as far as I know, but I think there was a fair amount of home-grown music on the Canadian prairies. I wonder how much of it hit the radio.

BTW, I saw the modern-day equivalent of your cast iron mortar today in Radio Shack. A kid was playing with a talking remote-control tank that fired plastic missiles. He took out a rack of phono-to-1/8" plugs and some coax cable before his dad bade him cease. Your version sounds infinitely more fun.

Subject: RE: Old time Border Radio clips-history-please listen
From: Art Thieme
Date: 12 Nov 02 - 10:58 PM

In Chicago I'd listen to WWVA in Wheeling, W. Virginia late at night just to the right of WLS. The WLS Barn Dance and the Opry seemed very modern compared to the much more old-timey music on WWVA. Even as a kid, that's how I remember it. The songs that told the tales were heard more often on the more old-time stations too. By the 1940s, when I came along, it was only Hank Snow's train songs that had that documentary, old ballad type, story song feel to 'em that said, "Yeah, you're hearing some history now!"

Once in a while Bob Atcher would sing an actual cowboy ballad on the WLS Barn Dance---along with his humorous junk songs (I thought). Bob was later to be the mayor of Shaumburg, Illinois for 20 years. I had a gig in Shaumburg in the 1970s and knocked on his door to tell him how much his doing the REAL cowboy songs meant to me. He left me waiting at the door, disapeared inside, and came back with one of my records for me to sign. It blew me away. I wound up going in and having coffee with Bob and his wife, Maggie. It was pretty cool, for sure.

But I digress.

When I finally got to Wheeling, W. Va., I took along with me all the memories of nights trying to tune in that station. All I recall from being in Wheeling though is that massively huge railroad bridge with it's giant arch. It was amazingly impressive.

Yes, I was too late for border radio ---or, at least, too young to know to look for it. But I found Wheeling and the fiddles and the banjos sure did get my attention. ----------- Later, when folk music came along and we FOUND IT and took it for our own in cities like my Chicago, I was amazed to hear people like Bob Gibson and even Big Bill Broonzy doing songs I had heard first out of WWVA in Wheeling. In the south they wer ejust "old songs". Coming out of the mouths of urban folks it was called FOLK MUSIC. ------ What goes around, comes around.

But those stations fed the music and the message all over the USA----JUST LIKE THE INTERNET and the site Masato pointed us to are doing now-----but all over the world. PRETTY AMAZING !!!

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Old time Border Radio clips-history-please listen
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 12 Nov 02 - 06:31 PM

Bardford, same principle, but smaller. The one sold back then was well-finished, 12-14 inches, much like a high end motorboat in appearance with windshield. I think it cost $5, which was a lot in the 1930s. There was a little pan which slid out and would take about a half teaspoon of Sterno- a careless kid could set himself alight, these toys would be banned today. We touched a match to the Sterno and shoved the pan under the little boiler. In a minute, off the boat would go. It was a little large for the bathtub, so I would head for the city park fountain which had an encircling pool.
Just remembered another favorite. A cast iron mortar. A rubber ball would be crammed into the mouth with a firecracker behind it. There was a little hole in the top through which the fuse would stick out. Yes, I took out a neighbor's window and lost the use of it. My parents didn't notice the cracked stucco on our house until later.

Subject: RE: Old time Border Radio clips-history-please listen
From: GUEST,Bardford
Date: 12 Nov 02 - 06:00 PM

Thanks for that link, Kat. Too bad I tuned in too late to get a life-size glow-in the-dark poster of Wolfman jack.

Here's some thread creep - Guest Q - are these anything like the boats you mentioned?

Subject: RE: Old time Border Radio clips-history-please listen
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Nov 02 - 02:40 PM

Kewl, thanks, GuestQ.

I had forgotten that Dallas Turner used the name "Nevada Slim" when on the radio. Sorry for not posting that earlier. I've got another clip, this one of him pitching all kinds of incredible services for free!**BG** I'll see if I cna get it uploaded later, today.

kat

Subject: RE: Old time Border Radio clips-history-please listen
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 12 Nov 02 - 02:27 PM

Kat, by the 1960s, not only was power reduced, but the old clear channel US stations were crowded by new stations, many lost their clear channel, signal patterns were limited, and interference from all sorts of power grids, and noise signals emitted from all sorts of electrical equipment, made reception poor. (Whew! Grade F on that sentence)

In 1930s New Mexico, we were able to listen to these stations across the country. Wheeling W. Va required a good night, but Chicago, Nashville, Baton Rouge, N. O., the big one in Cincinnati (WLW) were available most nights. Saturday Night was Barn Dance Night and Opry for many of us.
Amos and Andy was the most popular program (everything stopped; at the Elks Club the poker tables emptied as everyone gathered around the radio console).
We even listened to the Rose Bowl game direct (from KFI or KPO, I can't remember which) although static often interferred (daytime). But the sportscasters were good at recaps and we could catch up with the action.
During the week the Border stations were king. The tiny local station was poor. One program was Chinese music paid for by a Chinese cafe owner.

Subject: RE: Old time Border Radio clips-history-please listen
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Nov 02 - 12:55 PM

Thank you, Masato!! Wonderful link!

Subject: RE: Old time Border Radio clips-history-please listen
From: masato sakurai
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 07:16 PM

The Carter Family's Border Radio recordings (Scroll down).
~Masato

Subject: RE: Old time Border Radio clips-history-please listen
From: katlaughing
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 07:05 PM

Art, that is wonderful to hear about. I was hoping you'd come in here. I tried to email this to you, but it was too large of a file. This if the fellow I was trying to tell you about but couldn't remmeber hsi name last time we spoke.:-)

Guest,Q, fascinating stuff about the radio shows! Toywise, too. I had a battery-powered submarine when I was little that I absolutely loved to play with. Somehow it didn't make a move one time and I've never seen it since.

Up in Colorado about the farthest away radio I remember in the 60's was Oklahoma and only at night. It was thrilling, though. I can only imagine how much fun the Border radio must've been.

Thanks!

kat

Subject: RE: Old time Border Radio clips-history-please listen
From: Art Thieme
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 06:41 PM

The Carter Family was there then. Read the pretty fine bio of the Carter Family-----WILL YOU MISS ME WHEN I'M GONE by Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg----(Simon and Schuster -- 2002)

It's a good read that makes all of the Carters (and Johnny Cash) very human. You get both sides of all of them----the light and the dark. Although Maybelle seems to have been simply a very fine and grand person. The few times I heard her in person that's exactly how she seemed. A.P. was aparently eccentric and rather unique. Sara was just how she sounded on her ecords, pretty much in charge. She made her life conform to her wishes at the moment.

All three benefited from the sheer (((***P-O-W-E-R***))) of those border radio stations. It was a time of no Internet or sattelite communications and their fame was spread far and wide by those super-powerful transmitters. The antics of the boss were pretty fantastic too!!!

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Old time Border Radio clips-history-please listen
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 05:50 PM

I remember listening to XERA and the other border stations when I was a child in the 1930s. I pestered my parents to order a motor boat that was advertised on one of the stations. The toy boat was wonderful. It was powered by canned heat (Sterno) and, as it moved through the water, produced a realistic put-put. It was well-constructed and lasted for years. My parents gave it away, along with my train set, which I couldn't afford to buy back today, when they moved and I went to college. I still regret its loss.

When conditions were bad and we couldn't get the barn dances from WLS, WSM, Wheeling, Baton Rouge, etc., there were always the Mexican border stations to fall back on. Regardless of weather, they blasted through.
Too bad the old barn dance programs are gone. The old clear channel American stations (and don't forget Moose Jaw across the northern border) are also just a memory.

Subject: Old time Border Radio clips & history-pl
From: katlaughing
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 05:12 PM

Our friend, Roger C. is currently cleaning up old sound files belonging to Dallas Turner and making CDs from them. If you click on Dallas's name, you will be able to read about him. In the course of recording these, RogerC. has put together a couple of clips, one of which I've put up on my website. The clip includes Dallas singing of his life history on Border Radio, plus an excerpt of Slim Rhinehart and Patsy Montana doing Back in the saddle again. Please see below for more info on Border Radio. Please click HERE for the sound clip. PLEASE BE PATIENT AS IT TAKES SOME TIME TO DOWNLOAD. I will be changing this in the next day or two. It's worth the wait!*bg*

Dallas is about to have a 75th birthday and is tickled pink that there is so much interest in his experiences. There are a couple of really exciting things coming about which I will post about once they are ready to go public. In the meantime, I'd like to share the clip mentioned.

If you wait for the download and listen all the way through, you will also hear excerpts from a few adverts, including one about prostates, crazy water, and one of Wolfman Jack selling baby chickens!

Dallas mentions this bookBorder Radio. Here's an excerpt about it:

Before the Internet brought the world together, there was border radio. These mega-watt "border blaster" stations, set up just across the Mexican border to evade U.S. regulations, beamed programming across the United States and as far away as South America, Japan, and Western Europe.

This book traces the eventful history of border radio from its founding in the 1930s by "goat-gland doctor" J. R. Brinkley to the glory days of Wolfman Jack in the 1960s. Along the way, it shows how border broadcasters pioneered direct sales advertising, helped prove the power of electronic media as a political tool, aided in spreading the popularity of country music, rhythm and blues, and rock, and laid the foundations for today's electronic church. The authors have revised the text to include even more first-hand information and a larger selection of photographs.

Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford are freelance writers in Austin, Texas.

I will post more info about CD's available in a day or two. Thanks for listening!

kat