➦In 1927...singer Andy Williams was born in smalltown Iowa. After singing with three siblings in The Williams Brothers quartet on midwest radio as early as 1938, he became a featured soloist on NBC-TV’s Tonight Show, hosted in the early 50’s by Steve Allen. Later he was host of his own TV series (1962-71) and a number of Christmas specials on NBC. Most of his 44 albums were featured on MOR radio stations throughout his life. He succumbed to bladder cancer Sept. 25 2012 at age 84.
➦In 1928…NBC radio gave birth to what would be the longest run of any semi-classical music broadcast. It began as The Firestone Hour, evolving soon into the 30-minute Voice of Firestone, which aired o Monday evenings for 28-years. It was also a simulcast on NBC TV beginning in 1949, it moved to ABC in 1954 and ended its almost 35-year run on ABC-TV in 1963.
➦In 1948...Bing Crosby's song "White Christmas" debuted on the U.S. music charts. That was 7 years after it was first sung on a radio show sponsored by the Kraft Company on Christmas Day, 1941.
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| A Young Paul Harvey |
Paul Harvey Aurandt broadcast News and Comment on weekday mornings and mid-days, and at noon on Saturdays on the ABC Radio Network. He also voiced his famous "The Rest of the Story" segments. From the 1950s through the 1990s, Harvey's programs reached as many as 24 million people a week. Paul Harvey News was carried on 1,200 radio stations, 400 Armed Forces Network stations and 300 newspapers.
Harvey made radio receivers as a young boy. He attended Tulsa Central High School where a teacher was "impressed by his voice." On her recommendation, he started working at KVOO in Tulsa in 1933, when he was 14. His first job was helping clean up. Eventually he was allowed to fill in on the air, reading commercials and the news.
While attending the University of Tulsa, he continued working at KVOO, first as an announcer, and later as a program director. Harvey, at age nineteen spent three years as a station manager for KFBI AM, now known as KFDI, a radio station that once had studios in Salina, Kansas. From there, he moved to a newscasting job at KOMA in Oklahoma City, and then to KXOK, in St. Louis in 1938, where he was Director of Special Events and a roving reporter.
Harvey then moved to Hawaii to cover the United States Navy as it concentrated its fleet in the Pacific. He was returning to the mainland from assignment when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He eventually enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces but served only from December 1943 to March 1944.
Harvey then moved to Chicago, where in June 1944, he began broadcasting from the ABC affiliate WENR. In 1945, he began hosting the postwar employment program Jobs for G.I. Joe on WENR.
Harvey added The Rest of the Story as a tagline to in-depth feature stories in 1946.
On April 1, 1951, the ABC Radio Network debuted Paul Harvey News and Comment "Commentary and analysis of Paul Harvey each weekday at 12 Noon". Paul Harvey was also heard originally on Sundays; the first Sunday program was Harvey's introduction. Later, the Sunday program would move to Saturdays.
Harvey died on February 28, 2009, at the age of 90 at a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona.
➦In 1955...Elvis Presley's first single release for RCA Victor. No, it wasn’t ‘Hound Dog’ or ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ The first two sides were actually purchased from Sam Phillips of Sun Records: ‘Mystery Train’ and ‘I Forgot to Remember to Forget.’ RCAVictor called Elvis "The most talked about personality in recorded music in the last 10 years."
