➦In 1897...Walter Winchell born (Died at age 74 from cancer – February 20, 1972). He was a newspaper and radio gossip commentator.
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| Walter Winchell |
However, the McCarthy connection in time made him deeply unfashionable, his talents did not adapt well for television, and his career ended in humiliation.
He made his radio debut over WABC in New York, a CBS affiliate, on May 12, 1930. The show, entitled Saks on Broadway, was a 15-minute feature that provided business news about Broadway. He switched to WJZ (later renamed WABC) and the NBC Blue (later ABC Radio) in 1932 for the Jergens Journal.
He coined the intro: “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea.” Later his star would brighten for a new generation when he narrated the TV series The Untouchables.
Faith was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. He was the oldest of eight children. His parents, Abraham Faith and Minnie, née Rottenberg, were Jewish. He played violin and piano as a child, and played in theatres and at Massey Hall. After his hands were badly burned in a fire, he turned to conducting, and his live orchestras used the new medium of radio broadcasting.
Beginning with defunct stations CKNC and CKCL, Faith was a staple of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's live-music broadcasting from 1933 to 1940, when he resettled in Chicago. In the early 1940s, Faith was orchestra leader for the Carnation Contented program on NBC. From 1948-1949 he also served as the orchestra leader on the CBS radio network program The Coca-Cola Hour (also called The Pause That Refreshes). The orchestral accordionist John Serry Sr. collaborated with Faith in these broadcasts.
In 1945, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He made many recordings for Voice of America. After working briefly for Decca Records, he worked for Mitch Miller at Columbia Records, where he turned out dozens of albums and provided arrangements for many of the pop singers of the 1950s, including Tony Bennett, Doris Day, Johnny Mathis for Mathis's 1958 Christmas album titled Merry Christmas, and Guy Mitchell for whom Faith wrote Mitchell's number-one single, "My Heart Cries for You".
His most famous and remembered recordings are "Delicado" (1952), "The Song from Moulin Rouge" (1953) and "Theme from A Summer Place" (1960), which won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1961.
➦In 1927...Herbert E. Ives and Frank Gray of Bell Telephone Laboratories gave the first dramatic demonstration of mechanical television. The live picture and voice of then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover were transmitted over telephone lines from Washington, D.C. to New York. The reflected-light television system included both small and large viewing screens. The small receiver had a two-inch-wide by 2.5-inch-high screen. The large receiver had a screen 24 inches wide by 30 inches high. Both sets were capable of reproducing reasonably accurate, monochromatic moving images. Along with the pictures, the sets also received synchronized sound.
The system transmitted images over two paths: first, a copper wire link from Washington to New York City, then a radio link from Whippany, New Jersey. Comparing the two transmission methods, viewers noted no difference in quality.
In 1928, WRGB (then W2XB) was started as the world's first television station. It broadcast from the General Electric facility in Schenectady, NY. It was popularly known as "WGY Television".
➦In 1956…64 years ago today, the first regularly-scheduled, nationally-broadcast rock ‘n’ roll radio show premiered on the CBS Radio Network.
The reputation of disc jockey Alan Freed may have been sullied somewhat by the payola scandal that ran rampant through the broadcasting industry in the early 1960s, but if there’s one thing that’s never been in question, it’s that the man appreciated the merits of rock ‘n’ roll and was one of the genre’s major proponents as it was taking off around America in the ‘50s.
To borrow a concept from Danny and the Juniors, the creation of Rock ‘n’ Roll Dance Party was a sure sign that rock ‘n’ roll was here to stay – as the magazine Downbeat wrote at the time, “the fan mail we get from all around the country is…a true barometer for the new and exciting beat that has swept the country”. Episodes of the show were recorded for airing on the American Forces Network so that US soldiers stationed overseas could enjoy the latest tunes, and those episodes are the only ones that have survived.
➦In 1967...San Francisco DJ Tom Donahue went on the air at KMPX 106.9 FM for the first time playing what was referred to as progressive rock.
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