SBL Sunday Supplement

I am an introverted loner by nature, and a historian by proclivity. Hence this blog. Why the recent focus on Winona? you might ask. It's my hometown. It's where I grew up. True, I've not had a permanent residence in the Island City (which isn't really an island, by the way) in fifteen years, and haven't lived there for closer to twenty; and for a plethora of reasons that aren't important to this post, I don't foresee myself moving back anytime in the near or not-so-near future. When you're a child you don't necessarily think about place and existence beyond "this is where I live because it's where I was born and it's my town" and you simply exist and your life happens and that is your world; but when you get older, for some of us, we find that life isn't a plot of land where existence simply flourishes around you, but rather a roller coaster track of dubious construction that twists you and pulls you until you find a cart of reasonable comfort operating at a tolerable speed, and you nestle in, hoping that the wheels stay on the rails and that you don't spend too much time puking over the side. But I love history and research, and thoroughly enjoy excavating lost artifacts of my hometown's past. I miss many things about the town, both geographic places that have garnered a personal patina of sentimentality in my mind, the the few people still there with whom I am lucky enough to call myself friend. I now live on the East side of St. Paul, our state's grand capital. I've never been an urbanite. There are many things I now take for granted living in a metropolitan area that I never could have experienced staying in a small factory-and-college town, but I definitely prefer the small town quality of living compared to the chipped concrete-coated sprawl I find myself now maneuvering around. But I digress.

Here are a couple of ads from the Winona Daily News for programming on KNWO 1230 on the AM dial. It was Winona's first local station, going on the air in 1938, and solely remained "The Talk Of Winona" until 1957, when KAGE joined the broadcast family. 

I became a regular listener to KWNO during my days in junior high and high school. As a chronic insomniac, I would often find myself up at all hours of the night, either unable to fall asleep or fall back asleep should I have gotten up to use the restroom or something. It's a problem that persists to this day. At the time, KWNO broadcasted Coast To Coast AM with Art Bell from midnight until two a.m. (it was a three hour show), and then the first two hours of the program were looped again until five o'clock, when local news or right-wing talk radio would come on the air. The when and where of Kiwanis Club luncheons or the views of Rush Limbaugh have never been of particular interest to me, but an all-night radio program devoted to the bizarre, which gave equal opportunity to experts, skeptics and plain-bonkers sociopaths, was right up my alley.

I thought, being about radio, this was a perfect segue into the second episode of my Secret Basement Laboratory Radio Theater program. Last time, in episode one, I presented a couple of radio programs featuring wisecracking detectives. This time I thought I would provide a show of weather-appropriate programming, meaning short-shorts. Short radio programs were essential for padding out scheduling blocks back in the day of old time radio. It was essential because they could fill out local news and weather breaks, and ingenious because, though the programs ran only from ten to fifteen minutes or so, they could be serialized adventures divvied up into several episodic chunks, which might hook listeners and keep them tuning in to hear the other parts of the play.

I've compiled a nice assortment of programs for you here. We're starting off with a Believe It Or Not minute, a fifty-second or so program created sans-commercials by Robert Ripley as an extension of his then-booming Ripley's Believe It

Robert Ripley and friend.

Or Not brand of sideshow entertainment where two bizarre–and "true"–factoids are related to the listener. I've selected one that briefly relates the attempts to poison Thomas Overbury, the English poet and essayist who was thrown into the Tower Of London after raising the ire of James I (King of England) and a scandal ensued. Here he is dubbed "The Iron Man" for surviving the poisonous diet he was fed and survived.

Second, we have an episode of Blackstone, The Magic Detective from Nov. 28th, 1948. For more information about the personnel behind the show–no, Blackstone the magician wasn't actually playing himself–go to this excellent write-up with mp3s of many more episodes. The particular episode I've chosen for inclusion here is episode nine: "The Ghost That Wasn't."

Thirdly is an eight minute quickie from Calling All Detectives, a one man operation by personality Paul Barnes, who does all the voices. And it shows. This was a novelty show in that Barnes would call a listener to try and get them to solve the crime before revealing the whodunnit. This episode, "Morgue Nightclub Is A Setting For Death" is episode No. 366, originally broadcast on February 3rd, 1949.

I've included another Believe It Or Not in the intermission, this episode (no. 6) about a witchdoctor who had to wear a mask to change his identity. Talk about government red tape!

Cugi and cocktail.

Next we have a musical program! Victory Parade of Spotlight Bands, a Coca-Cola sponsored big band program ran for fifteen minutes, Monday through Friday for a brief period starting in 1941. Each episode featured a "spotlight" on a different band. The one I've chosen features a personal favorite of mine: Xavier Cugat. Cugi was a Spanish bandleader who moved to Cuba and became the Rhumba king of the American music world. He's also famous (or infamous) for thrusting Charo on an unsuspecting world. 

Finally, I present to you a Ripley's competitor–Strange As It Seems, also based off of a syndicated bizarre minutiae factoid comic strip, presented by illustrator John Hix. Unlike Ripley's, which invited you to "believe it or not", Hix claimed that all of his bizarre facts were "...verified by a minimum of three sources." The show was sponsored by Ex-Lax, which will be evident as the commercial at the beginning of the program takes up a good minute-and-a-half, trying to convince you of all the chocolatey wonder that is everyone's favorite laxative. This particularly interesting episode is about a baby spy during the French revolution. The spy wasn't really a baby, but a 23" tall dwarf named Richebourg. He did in fact exist, and is listed in the Guinness Book Of World Records as "Shortest Spy".

As a bonus treat, I've rounded out the program with two tracks from Xavier Cugat. "Flute Nightmare" was released in 1954, utilized in the film The Americano, starring Glenn Ford and directed by William Castle of all people! The other is the b-side to a Mercury Records single released in 1952, titled "Jungle Flute."

Enjoy!

Flying Saucers Attack Winona!

"Flying Saucers Bombard City; Alert Air Raid Warden Recovers One" reads an article from the July 11th, 1947 issue of the Winona Republican-Herald. Did UFOs really descend on my hometown one post-war summer day, darkening the bluffs with their fleet and sending the townsfolk into a panic?

No. As quickly related in this gimmicky PR piece for the Civil Air Patrol vis-a-vis Major Joseph Parks of Minneapolis, "liaison officer between the army air corps and the Minnesota Civil Air Patrol, who happened to be in Winona on business." Parks and his "aides", consisting of Lieutenant H.C. Aakre, commander of the Winona unit of the CAP, and Sgt. Robert Reynolds, army recruiter and CAP public relations officer, bombarded the city of Winona with novelty pie plates stamped 

Join The 

Civil Air Patrol

Army Recruiting Station

Post Office, Winona, Minn.

Parks clearly had tongue firmly in cheek when visiting to bolster CAP recruitment numbers. The "saucers" were taken to Parks and his aides who, after studying the alien object for a half-hour, "emerged and announced that they, too, would swear that the missile was a pie plate IF they didn't know about the 'flying saucers.'"

"We are, frankly, disturbed that our cosmic visitors are so acquainted with our pattern of life," Parks is quoted, "but we appreciate the publicity...." Clearly. The piece, puff clearly provided by Parks that rides the line between eye-rolling and damn entertaining, goes on to promote "aviation training opportunities available to youths...between 15 and 18..." to become cadets in the Air Patrol, and take what I have to assume are supervised flying lessons. "CAP instructors and members only need to pay for the gas and oil, which runs about 95 cents an hour."

Well, flying saucers must have been either in the air, or on the minds, of Americans in general–and Winonans in specific, for the purposes of this post–because tarnation if that very same issue of the Winona Republican-Herald didn't have a second saucer-centric article in it. This one from a surly Winonan who diagnoses the then-prolific saucer sightings in Blair, Wisconsin (about 45 mins NE, across the Mississippi from Winona) as hallucinations of taunting, empty dinner plates, brought on by rising food costs. Being truly Midwestern, and perhaps-not-entirely endemic to the upper portion I've spent nearly four decades in, a wisecracking auto dealer adds his 2¢ with a loaded jab about some stolen wheels. Leave it to a Minnesotan to make a tongue-in-cheek reference to his woes as a passive-aggressive way to complain about/add humor to a larger issue.

Big Noise From Winnetka!

Here is a short featuring Bob Crosby and The Bob-Cats–Bob-Cats being the used nomenclature in this short, as seen on the blackboard in the background. The group went by any of two dozen or so different spellings and names (Bob Crosby & His Bobcats, Lt. Bob Crosby and His V-Disc Bobcats, Bob Crosby & His Dixie Land Bob Cats, etc.) throughout their existence.

Bob, actually born George Robert Crosby, brother to Harry Crosby (popularly known as Bing, of course) in Spokane, WA, played with the Clark Randall Orchestra (also featuring Glenn Miller) in 1935, before splintering off and starting his Bob Crosby Orchestra and his"band-within-a-band" Dixie Land jazz group, The Bob Cats. They combined the sound of 1920s and early 30s traditional jazz with the then-popular swing music to great success, until the band dissolved in 1942. 

1933 menu for Chicago's Blackhawk restaurant, with art by Edouardé, on whom I
could find no information.

Here we don't see Mr. Crosby; rather we get bassist Bob Haggart–one of Crosby's chief composers, and drummer Ray Bauduc, co-composer of the number. "Big Noise From Winnetka" went on to be prolifically covered by the likes of Gene Krupa, the great Cozy Cole, and even Bette Middler, whatever you make of that. 

The composition was allegedly spontaneous, created from an impromptu jam session between Haggart and Bauduc at the Chicago hot spot The Blackhawk. Bob Crosby's Bob Cats recorded it in 1938 in its initial instrumental form, and again with added lyrics by Crosby and Russian-American saxophonist and composer Gil Rodin. 

The tune was played for the camera at least three times: Once in the 1941 feature Let's Make Music, which starred Crosby and was directed by Leslie Goodwins (director of The Mummy's Curse, several short subject films like Should Wives Work? and a number of Lupe Velez pictures.) There's a clip (below) here, where you see Haggart do a comical take at the beginning before the band starts in (though not playing "Big Noise From Winnetka"). 

It was featured in 1943's Reveille with Beverly, this time played by the Bob Crosby Orchestra  and Vocal Group, utilizing the later vocal version. Clip below.

The initial short that prompted this post is a 1951 Snader Telescription short produced for television play by Louis D. Snader, a SoCal theater owner who sought to diversify his portfolio by branching out into the then-burgeoning television market. He's also the guy who made similar shorts with Korla Pandit, gaining him his first national exposure. 

Promotional spread for Snader TELEscriptions.