August 17 Radio History

➦In 1900...Quincy Howe born (Died from cancer at age 76 – February 17, 1977). He was best known for his CBS radio broadcasts during World War II.  Howe served as director of the American Civil Liberties Union before the Second World War, and as chief editor at Simon & Schuster from 1935 to 1942.

Quincy Howe

He once said that life began for him in 1939, when he began to broadcast news and commentary on WQXR radio in New York City.

Howe joined CBS in June 1942, doing the opening news summary on the radio network's The World Today newscast. He left CBS in 1947 to join ABC. In the fall of 1955, he hosted four episodes of the 26-week prime time series Medical Horizons on ABC before he was replaced in that capacity by Don Goddard.

Howe moderated the fourth and final Kennedy/Nixon debate on October 21, 1960. Howe retired from broadcasting in 1974.

➦In 1943...writer Norman Corwin’s first success debuted on CBS radio. It was Passport for Adams, starring Robert Young who played a small town newspaper editor. Norman Corwin earliest and biggest successes were in the writing and directing of radio drama during the 1930s and 1940s.

Corwin was among the first producers to regularly use entertainment—even light entertainment—to tackle serious social issues. He also wrote and produced such radio classics as This is War, An American in England and We Hold These Truths.

➦In 1963...Ed Gardner died at age 62 (Born - June 29, 1901). He is best remembered as the creator and star of the radio's popular Duffy's Tavern comedy series.

In the early 1940s, Gardner worked as a director, writer, and producer for radio programs. In 1941, he created a character for This Is New York, a program that he was producing. The character, which Gardner played, became Archie of Duffy's Tavern.

The successful radio program aired on CBS from 1941 to 1942, on the NBC Blue Network from 1942 to 1944, and on NBC from 1944 to 1951. Speaking in a nasal Brooklyn accent, and sounding like just about every working class New Yorker his creator had ever known, Gardner as Archie invariably began each week's show by answering the telephone and saying, "Duffy's Tavern, where the elite meet to eat, Archie the manager speaking, Duffy ain't here—oh, hello, Duffy."

Duffy the owner never appeared, but Archie did, with Gardner assuming the role himself after he could not find the right actor to play the role.

➦In 1969…It was the third and final day the Woodstock Music Festival in Bethel, NY.  Performing were Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Ten Years After, John Sebastian, Sha Na Na, Joe Cocker, Country Joe and the Fish, the Band, Ten Years After, Johnny Winter and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. 

➦In 1982...The first commercial compact disc was produced. It was a recording from 1979 of Claudio Arrau performing Chopin waltzes (Philips 400 025-2). Arrau was invited to the Langenhagen plant to press the start button. The first popular music CD produced at the new factory was The Visitors (1981) by ABBA.

Larry Johnson

➦In 2011...Radio personality Larry 'The Legend' Johnson died at age 78. The early years of his career included a stint at WKDA-AM, a Top 40 station in Nashville. He returned to WKDA after military service during WWII and then worked on-air and in management at WDXB-AM in Chattanooga.

Business connections led to work at WGN-AM and then WIND-AM in Chicago. He got tired of working nights and quit his job in Chicago. He ended up on television at WLUK-TV in Green Bay.

During the 1970s, he found a new gig at WZUU in Milwaukee, where his southern accent and on-air style proved popular. Later, he worked for WISN.

Radio listeners loved his unorthodox spin on the news. When garbage workers made headlines, he went to work with them, returning to the air with a newfound respect for those who did that job every day. He liked being involved with charitable causes, raising money for his "Love Fund" to benefit those in need.

Marge Thrasher

➦In 2012…Longtime Memphis TV and radio personality Marge Thrasher died at the age of 78.

Thrasher became a public figure when she joined the worlds first all-girl radio station, WHER, in Memphis in 1960. Seven years later she expanded her role on the station with a listener call in show, said to be the first such format in Memphis radio. It worked so well, Memphis television station WHBQ-TV hired her to do a morning interview and call in program on Channel 13. The show was called "Straight Talk," She continued in the role of morning show host for nearly 20 years.

"'She could have been the white Oprah Winfrey,' her friend, radio personality George Klein told The Commercial Appeal. She especially enjoyed her interviews with such notables as Elvis Presley, Julia Child, Dolly Parton, Nancy Reagan, and Billy Graham

After television, Marge Thrasher had a career in Memphis real estate.

➦In 2012…Denver radio personality Charley Martin, who was part of the dominant morning team from the 1970s to 1990s KHOW radio, died at age 67.

Charley Martin

He was half of "Hal and Charley," the dominant morning team on Denver's KHOW, launched in 1976 and lasting for decades. The two started in radio in Des Moines, Iowa, when Martin was in high school, working weekends with Moore at KSO, a top-40 station.

Martin holds a key place in Denver radio history.  "When humorous deejays were the big thing on AM radio, he and Hal Moore were among the best," said Dusty Saunders, the longtime media critic for the Rocky Mountain News and a current contributor to The Denver Post. "Morning drive time belonged to them," and they regularly scored "enormous ratings," he said.

The duo holds a claim to broader pop-culture history as well: in the 1980 Stanley Kubrick film "The Shining," Hal and Charley's KHOW show can be heard on the car radio on the approach to the hotel.

"Hal and Charley, they were the brand, like Huntley and Brinkley. They shaped Denver media in the '70s and '80s," said Chuck Lontine, a longtime radio executive who worked with the pair early in their career.

KHOW dropped the show in 1995 when it switched to a more issue-oriented talk format.