THE DECLINE OF THE HOWARD STERN SHOW

 Many of my readers will be surprised that I am a Howard Stern. He was a part of my growing up in the 1990s. You never knew what was going to come out of Stern's mouth. 1994 was a lot different than 2024. Howard Stern is a lot different now. Before Stern went mainstream there was just something so wrong about him that you had to listen to him. It is impossible to listen to him now and talk about the latest cat he saved with his young wife or the latest interview he had with the boring Bruce Springstein. When did he change? Here is the timeline:

December 2009: Amid continuing addiction issues, Artie Lange departs the Howard Stern Show. The show chooses not to fill the "Artie Chair"

January 2011: At the start of a new contract with SiriusXM, the show drops from airing regularly 4 days a week (Monday to Thursday) to airing regularly 3 days a week (Monday to Wednesday).

April 2012: Stern and Buchwald's lawsuit against SiriusXM (over claims that SiriusXM did not pay them annual subscriber bonuses after Sirius merged with XM and absorbed XM's subscribers) is dismissed "with prejudice." Though Stern continues working with SiriusXM and signs (at least) two 5-year renewals with the company, it has been suggested by fans that this leaves Stern bitter and less willing to develop original content for his channels.

2012: Marci Turk, with no previous radio experience, is hired as Chief Operating Officer of the Howard Stern Show. Unlike other staff members, she is rarely referenced on air. In media profiles since her hiring, Turk has been credited with "softening" the image of Stern and his show and attracting bigger-name celebrities to come on as guests.

October 2012: Longtime regular Gilbert Gottfried makes his final appearance on the show, though rumors persist that he was ostensibly banned for spitting on cupcakes in the hallway during a previous appearance in November 2010. Gilbert later reveals in interviews that he was told by Baba Booey that the show "doesn't book stand-ups" anymore. Please note that Amy Schumer is a regular guest on the show over the next decade.

December 2012: Though the video is not leaked until 2019, Stern addresses his staff at "Revolution 2013" that has become known as "The Pelican Brief." During the nearly hour-long presentation, Stern lectures his staff on numerous topics, including how to attract more "A-list" celebrities to the show. This includes the often-ridiculed suggestion that he created the careers of major stars like Jerry Seinfeld and that the staff should create fake Twitter accounts to encourage celebrities to go on the Stern show.

December 2013: Howard TV is discontinued. Stern hypes its upcoming replacement, "Howard 360", which is eventually revealed to be simply video clips from the show on the SiriusXM app. Notable Howard TV personalities that contributed to the show, such as Scott DePace, are gone from the show.

September 2014: Eric the Actor, whose calls regularly took up hours of airtime, dies. C-level callers like Bobo and Hanzi are soon elevated, likely to fill Eric's usual airtime. Hanzi is banned from the show in April 2016.

January 16, 2015: The Wrap-Up Show officially becomes the Jon and Gary call-in show with the occasional D-level guest that rarely features anything but Jon and Gary talking about how great the show was that day. Other staff members are banned from sitting in on the show.

May 2019: Stern publishes a book of interview transcripts, Howard Stern Comes Again. Promotion for the book further pushes the "World's Greatest Interviewer" angle. In the book and promotional interviews, Stern cites a disastrous interview with Robin Williams as one of his biggest regrets (and that he tried to apologize to Williams before he died), though no one can find such an interview as it is described by Stern. The book sells 147,000 copies in its first week. In contrast, Private Parts sold over 1 million copies in its first 3 weeks.

March 2020: As a result of COVID-19, the Howard Stern Show staff begins "broadcasting" from their homes. Listeners suspect that some content and interviews are pre-taped, and the staff continues to work from home long after many other prominent broadcasters have returned to their studios. Robin's News, a staple of the show from decades, is abruptly ended. As of March 2021, the show is still being broadcast from home...

RIP: The Howard Stern Show...

FORGOTTEN ONES: VAUGHN DE LEATH

One of the early recording era's brightest stars was Vaughn De Leath. She was a mega star in the 1920s, but she is not very well remembered today. Born on September 26, 1894, Vaughn gained popularity in the 1920s, earning the sobriquets "The Original Radio Girl" and the "First Lady of Radio.De Leath was an early exponent, and often credited as inventor, of a style of vocalizing known as crooning. One of her hit songs, "Are You Lonesome Tonight?," recorded in 1927, achieved fame when it became a hit for Elvis Presley in 1960.

In January 1920, inventor and radio pioneer Lee DeForest brought her to the cramped studio of his station, 2XG, located in New York City's World's Tower, where De Leath broadcast "Swanee River". Although not, as is sometimes stated, the first broadcast of live singing, she established herself as a skilled radio performer, and De Forest would later note: "She was an instant success. Her voice and her cordial, unassuming microphone presence were ideally suited to the novel task. Without instruction she seemed to sense exactly what was necessary in song and patter to successfully put herself across". According to some historical accounts of this incident, having been advised that high notes sung in her natural soprano might shatter the fragile vacuum tubes of her carbon microphone's amplifier, De Leath switched to a deep contralto and in the process invented "crooning", which became the dominant pop vocal styling for the next three decades.

Her recording career began in 1921. Over the next decade she recorded for a number of labels, including Edison, Columbia, Victor, Okeh, Gennett, and Brunswick. She occasionally recorded for the subsidiary labels of some of these companies under various pseudonyms. These included Gloria Geer, Mamie Lee, Sadie Green, Betty Brown, Nancy Foster, Marion Ross, Glory Clarke, Angelina Marco, and Gertrude Dwyer. De Leath had a highly versatile range of styles, and as material required could adapt as a serious balladeer, playful girl, vampish coquette, or vaudeville comedian.

In 1923, she became one of the first women to manage a radio station, WDT in New York City, over which she also performed and led a sixty-piece orchestra. In 1928 she appeared on an experimental television broadcast, and later became a special guest for the debut broadcast of The Voice of Firestone radio show. She also was one of the first American entertainers to broadcast to Europe via transatlantic radio transmission.

De Leath made her last recording in 1931 for the Crown label. She made her final nationwide network performances in the early 1930s. In her waning years, she made radio appearances on local New York stations, including WBEN in Buffalo.

De Leath was married twice. In 1924 she wed artist Leon Geer, from whom she was divorced in 1935. The following year, she married musician Irwin Rosenbloom, from whom she was divorced in 1941.

In 1931, De Leath sued Kate Smith for using the "First Lady of the Radio" designation. Although Smith desisted for a time, she resumed the mantle after De Leath's death.After her career went into decline, De Leath endured considerable financial difficulties, complicated by a drinking problem, which contributed to her death at age 48 in Buffalo, New York. Her obituary in The New York Times incorrectly stated her age at death as 42. Her ashes were buried in her childhood home of Mount Pulaski, Illinois. Vaughn De Leath did too young and was forgotten too soon...

THE END OF RHYTHM, SWEET & HOT

 

As you all know I love the old vintage music. Sometimes the older the better, but my favorite period of music lies between 1930 and 1950. I have a huge collection, so I have music at my fingertips. However, I still wish there were more radio shows that catered to my taste in music. Pittsburgh got rid of their nostalgia station WJAS years ago, but there was one show that satisfied my nostalgia blues and that was "Rhythm Sweet & Hot" on WDUQ. Hosted by Mike Plasket and Dale Abraham, the show ran from 6-8 on Saturday nights, and they played everything from Gene Austin to Kay Starr.

The show originally started with Ken Crawford, who sadly died in 2006. He became friends with Mike Plaskett, who worked in TV and radio and who shared Mr. Crawford's love for the same music. In 1980, they launched a program on WQED-FM. Soon after, the station changed to an all-classical format, and Mr. Crawford and Mr. Plaskett moved to WDUQ in 1981. Both worked as volunteer hosts. Mr. Crawford was last heard a month before he died on the program.

"Rhythm Sweet & Hot, after 43 years on the air is now done. A formal announcement will be made, but Mike Plaskett sent me an email confirming. The program personally meant so much to me. My Grandfather got me into this great music. In my teenage years I would record the program on cassette, some of which I still have. After my Grandfather died in 2002, the show remained a constant in my life and helped me not only discover great music, but in a way it served as a rememberance of my Grandfather. I got married in 2004, and had children in 2009 and 2012, but I continued to listen to the show religiously on Saturday nights. My wife would even tell my children - "Leave dad alone, it's Saturday night and Rhythm Sweet & Hot is on. 

I'll miss my Saturday nights with Mike and Dale. The memories of the them will not disappear or be forgotten much like the records they played...

UPDATE: Dale Abraham is continuing on the radio in a new program called "Swing And Sway". Reportedly both Dale and Mike quit the original show due to problems with management, but they managed to talk Dale into coming back. The new incarantion is enjoyable but Mike is definitely missed...

Swing & Sway with Dale Abraham

THE RADIO LEGACY OF PHIL HARRIS AND ALICE FAYE

By the end of the Second World War, subtle radio comedy was becoming as hard to find as an unfurnished apartment, a new pair of nylons, or a porterhouse steak. The war years had brought with them a bold, brassy style of humor that asked no questions and took no prisoners — with a machine-gun tempo and a Sherman Tank aggressiveness, the radio comics of the early postwar era beat their listeners over the ears with jokes and gags and made them like it.

The comedy characters who emerged from this era were every bit as outrageous as the material itself, wild, exaggerated caricatures of every possible human frailty — the cartoonish, vaudevillian denizens of Allen’s Alley, the flyspecked habitués of Duffy’s Tavern, the screaming pop-eyed stooges who surrounded Bob Hope and Eddie Cantor and Abbott and Costello. There was nothing realistic or nuanced about these characters — they had no grounding in the real world. They were caricatures, pure and simple, and the audiences of the time understood them as such, existing only for the sake of laughs. And perhaps no program of the era captured this zeitgeist of unrestrained lunacy quite so well as The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show.

By the time bandleader Phil Harris and his recently-retired movie star wife Alice Faye converted the long-running Sunday night Fitch Bandwagon program from a musical variety format to a situation comedy, Phil had been playing a zany comic caricature for nearly a decade as a member of Jack Benny’s troupe. Here was the conceited, hard-drinking curly-haired pretty-boy entertainer in all his glory, traits painted in such broad strokes that audiences genuinely believed Phil Harris to be an irredeemable reprobate of the first water — except he never touched anything so pedestrian as water.

But adapting this caricature to a situation comedy format posed a problem. Harris and Faye proposed to do a family comedy, presenting themselves as a real-life married couple, with two young children. And with kids in the picture, Harris’s zany booze-fueled antics suddenly didn’t seem so funny. Writers Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher solved the problem by turning Phil into the straight man for an even more outrageous caricature — the shiftless, scheming, childishly-irresponsible left-handed guitar player Frankie Remley.

Remley was a real man, a real member of the Harris orchestra and a close personal friend of Jack Benny, who began dropping random Remley gags into his program in the late 1930’s. These jokes, accumulating over several years, sketched a basic outline which Connelly and Mosher used as the foundation for a fully-developed character, brought to vivid life by the brilliant Elliot Lewis. As developed by Connelly and Mosher, and as expanded upon by the subsequent writing team of Ray Singer and Dick Chevillait, Frankie Remley wasn’t just a lazy, shiftless, no-account bum — he was the laziest, most shiftless, most no-account bum who ever lived. Lewis’s full-tilt performance in the role perfectly captured the characterization in the scripts — bringing Remley to life as a man who ricocheted from one mishap to another, all the while blissfully oblivious to the chaos he left in his wake. And next to a creature of such barbarous habits, even Phil Harris seemed just a bit more responsible, and thus more believable and acceptable as a parent of young children. It was a master stroke of character development that perfectly fit the mood of the times, and which created some of radio’s most hilarious moments.

The supporting characters who populated the Harris-Faye program were just as broadly drawn as the central figures. Three prominent adversaries stood in the path of whatever mayhem Phil and Frankie might be scheming up in any given week — and each of those characters was exaggerated to the extreme. The most prominent of these characters, the malevolent grocery boy Julius Abruzzio, was a sassy, vest-pocket delinquent who viciously and methodically tormented Phil and Frankie for the sheer joy it brought to his otherwise tedious life. He needed no other motive, he displayed no other traits. Actor Walter Tetley had made an entire career out of playing smart-mouthed kids, but with Julius he raised the stereotype to its ultimate degree. In keeping with the usual Harris-Faye Show pattern, he wasn’t just another brat, he was The Worst Brat Who Ever Lived, and audiences invariably screamed with delight as he made his weekly entrance.

Continuing along those same lines, the second great adversary on the program was Willie, Alice’s brother, who served as her business manager and general factotum — and who never missed an opportunity to look down his nose at Phil and Frankie and their nonsense of the week. Portrayed by Broadway character actor Robert North, and later by film comedian John Hubbard, as a mincing, officious Franklin Pangbornesque flibbertigibbet, Willie was the ultimate caricature of the irritating, meddling, live-in brother-in-law.

These were the basic ingredients, a volatile blend of exaggerated personality types destined for comic conflict, and each week they were plunged into plotlines every bit as outrageous. What happens when Frankie tries to beat the meat shortage by buying his own cow? How about Phil and Frankie deciding to develop new drugs for Rexall with a kitchen-table chemistry set? Or when Frankie becomes the manager of a hard-boiled lady wrestler? Or when Phil replaces the blower motor on the furnace with a war-surplus wind tunnel? Or when Phil and Frankie try to cook a fifty-four pound turkey for Thanksgiving? What if Phil and Frankie buy an old trunk with a dead body in it? No subtlety here, no heartwarming special moments, just raw, untamed, wide-open comedy — just what postwar America wanted most. When Singer and Chevillait took over the program in 1948, it reached its zenith, with each episode more unpredictable than the one before. The writers were given free rein, with minimal editorial control by Harris and Faye, who were perfectly willing to engage in whatever nonsense they cooked up each week.

The sort of comedy the Harris-Faye Show specialized in couldn’t last. It was too wild, too undisciplined to sustain itself over the long term, especially with the shift in the national mood during the early 1950’s. Zaniness faded from favor, and warm, lovable families were back in vogue. Security and responsibility and gentle chuckles were coming back in style — and a world like that had no place for Phil and Frankie, their friends, and their enemies. By 1954, the series was on its last legs, and it never had a chance of moving to television.

But the Harris-Faye Show lives on today, a consistent favorite among old-time-radio enthusiasts. While many radio comedy programs seem corny or dated to present-day listeners, the Harris-Faye style of comedy stands out as startlingly modern — sardonic, self-referential, and self-aware, as much a sharp parody of the conventions of family comedy as it is an actual family comedy. What made it the perfect expression of its own era makes it equally appealing to audiences six decades later....

SOURCE

COMING SOON: BING CROSBY - PHILCO RADIO TIME

A new excellent two CD set will be coming out in May from Sepia records called "Bing Crosby - Philco Radio Time". From the Philco Radio Time series starring Bing Crosby broadcast between 1946 & 1949 this 2CD set picks up Bing's cover versions of the hits of the day. It's a historical archive of those immediate post-war years and demonstrates Bing's versatility with all kinds of songs as he duets with Ezio Pinza, Al Jolson, Burl Ives, Dick Powell, Peggy Lee, Rhonda Fleming, Dorothy Kirsten..

TRACKS:

CD1:
Five Minutes More
Timber
In The Evening By The Moonlight
You Are My Sunshine

If You Were The Only Girl In The World
La Borrachita
(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons
The Anniversary Song
Among My Souvenirs
Guilty
Country Style
Linda
How Are Things In Glocca Morra?
Time After Time
Mam'selle
Peg O' My Heart
Feudin', Fightin' And Fussin'
That's My Desire
I Wonder, I Wonder, I Wonder
I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now?
Almost Like Being In Love
Sweet Betsy From Pike
Clementine
Just An Old Love Of Mine
You Do
 I Still Get Jealous
With A Hey! And A Hi! And A Ho! Ho! Ho!
The Best Things In Life Are Free
I Only Have Eyes For You
With Plenty Of Money And You
You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby
Jeepers Creepers
Shuffle Off To Buffalo
Thanks A Million
How Lucky You Are
Love Is So Terrific
Hooray For Love

CD2:

I May Be Wrong
Blue Shadows On The Trail
Baby Face
Nature Boy
You're Too Dangerous, Cherie
My Happiness
A Tree In the Meadow
Rambling Rose
Something To Remember You By
Hair Of Gold, Eyes Of Blue
Cuanta La Gusta
My Darling, My Darling
The Missouri Waltz
I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm
So In Love
Sunflower
You Was
Once In Love With Amy
While The Angelus Was Ringing
Down The Old Ox Road
Cruising Down The River
Riders In The Sky
Blue Hawaii
Careless Hands
When Is Sometime
Again
Buttons And Bows
It's Magic
So Dear To My Heart
I Got Lucky In The Rain
Far Away Places
So Tired
Powder Your Face With Sunshine
Some Enchanted Evening

CRAIG ROBERTS AND SWING STREET RADIO

Surrounded by shelves containing vintage recordings and a desk filled with various radio broadcasting apparatus, Craig Roberts gestured toward a stack of 78RPM records, “there sits some rare Ella Fitzgerald recordings for our 100th birthday tribute to the Queen of Jazz!”, he said with obvious pride. Roberts, who says his age is “the same as Jack Benny- perpetually 39!” has been collecting rare and vintage big band, swing and early jazz recordings for over 40 years. He recently brought together a group of other fans of music of the swing era to form the ‘Swing & Big Band Preservation Society’, and launched the non-profit organization’s web site called ‘Swing Street Radio’ (www.SwingStreetRadio.org). “These recordings were quickly being lost to time and had to be preserved”, explained Roberts. “So far, we have assembled over 15,000 rare and vintage recordings from the big band era, and are in the process of digitizing, restoring and preserving this great music for future generations.”

As a young boy, Roberts loved to visit his grandmother’s home, where he ventured into his father’s childhood bedroom to discover a collection of 78RPM records. “I played them hours on end. I literally grew up listening to Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday and vocal groups like the Mills Brothers.” As a young adult, Roberts followed his passion into radio, where he has served as a program director, talk show host and engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area for some 39 years.

The eventual marriage of Craig’s passion for radio and love of big band and swing music seemed inevitable. “My first job in radio, I anchored live coverage of city council meetings. During the breaks, I would play Glenn Miller tunes to fill the time” explained Roberts. “Soon after, I was given a weekly time slot to showcase this wonderful music.” Early in his career, Roberts worked with Artie Shaw, Tex Beneke and Maxine Andrews of the Andrews Sisters. He produced San Francisco big band leader Del Courtney’s New Year’s Eve show for CBS Radio. 

Del Courtney (1910-2006)

“There is an entire generation that knows nothing about the tremendous role early jazz and swing music contributed to the morale of the Allied Forces and their families back home during the Second World War, and how the music of that period continues to impact popular music to this very day” says Roberts. “Our goal is to not only preserve and promote this great music to new generations, but to foster appreciation for the ‘trail blazers’ of the period.” Roberts considers the big band era ‘the golden age of popular music’.

All of the original big band artists heard on Swing Street Radio come from the organization’s carefully restored digital copies of fragile 78RPM records, or rare radio station transcriptions. “We are fortunate to have several career broadcasters involved in our efforts, so we not only maintain professional quality in our programming, but enjoy some outstanding radio voices as well”, said Roberts who hosts ‘Swing Street Ballroom’ each week on the station.

Periodically, the station offers tributes to specific artists, live performance recordings and even airs old time radio shows for an hour each weekday evening during their syndicated ‘Radio Yesteryear’ program. In addition to the full time music stream that features well-known names of American & British big bands, Swing Street Radio’s website provides extensive artist biographies, a global “current events” calendar, and news from the world of swing and big band.

FOR MORE INFO PLEASE CHECK OUT:  www.SwingStreetRadio.org.

MUSIC BREAK: BUDDY CLARK & THE ANDREWS SISTERS - BABY FACE

PAST OBITS: FRANK WAPPAT

For this past obit we are going to spotlight a very different kind of entertainer in disc jockey Frank Wappat. In the 1990s, I had about a dozen friends from England that I traded music with. Unfortunately those years are gone, but my friends from across the pond introduced me to Frank Wappat's radio show. He died five years today. This was published in the Chronicle Live on February 17, 2014...

Veteran broadcaster Frank Wappat has died.

The radio presenter worked for the BBC for 40 years and died yesterday morning from heart failure at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary.

Today was his 84th birthday.

The former BBC Newcastle presenter retired in October 2010 due to ill health after suffering from a stroke which left him with condition Aphasia.

He began his broadcasting career via the pirate station Radio 390 on the Thames Estuary and then moved to the Tyneside station in 1970.

He went on to become its longest-serving presenter drawing in thousands of followers along the way.

Radio listeners will know him best for his work producing and presenting two BBC Newcastle shows - Sunday morning’s Inspirational Show from 6am to 7.30am and the award-winning Frank Wappat Music show from 7pm to 10pm.

Before he turned to radio he was a Methodist lay preacher, but quickly fell foul of the church authorities whom, he claims, did not like his “religion can be enjoyable!” approach.

In the 1960s he formed his own alternative congregation and worshippers flocked first to his Mission in Byker, Newcastle, and then to the redundant C of E church he occupied in North Shields.

Meanwhile, his Thirties Club and Gospel Hour programmes attracted large audiences and he would often lead the annual Christmas sing-a-longs in Newcastle’s Eldon Square with crowds of shoppers.

Crooner Chick Henderson

He won two Sony Radio Academy Awards during his career, one for his Master Joe Peterson programme and in 2000 he won his second for investigative journalism for his work unearthing the truth about the death of 1940s singer Chick Henderson.

His Nostalgia show continued on BBC Radio Newcastle and BBC Radio York until August 2010...

He lived in Blyth with his wife Susan.In an interview with the Chronicle on his retirement he said he was never tempted to work outside the North East.

He said: “I see myself as a Geordie lad from Hebburn, I don’t think I’d fit in with big establishments.”

SOURCE

HEALTHWATCH: ARTIE LANGE

Whenever comedian Artie Lange used to come to Pittsburgh I would go to one of his shows. I have bought him dinner, got his autograph, and have laughed with him through the years. Since Lange left the Howard Stern show though, I have grown tired of his comedy. It is not his comedy, but his disregard for his own health and life. Watching the comedy of Artie Lange now is almost like watching a very slow snuff film. In recent years it seems like we are watching him die right before our eyes.

Artie Lange had all the makings of a great comedian along the likes of his idol John Belushi. Both Lange and Belushi have/had great comedic timing. They also share something else, a love of drugs. Lange got fired from the television show MadTV in 1997 and the Howard Stern show in 2010.

Now it looks like Artie is continuing on his downward spiral. Lange's mom admits doctors are worried about his deteriorating condition. Struggling substance abuse addict Artie Lange sent fans into a frenzy on December 6 when he unexpectedly cancelled his appearance on the Artie and Anthony Show. While the former Howard Stern sidekick blamed the flu for his absence, RadarOnline.com has learned exclusively it’s his uphill battle with drugs that’s causing him to cancel on his podcast and other shows.

His mother, Judy Lange, revealed the truth about her son’s constant troubles exclusively to Radar, saying: “Artie has to take care of a few things. He’s got diabetes, so that doesn’t help. He’s okay, as much as he can be. But he is fighting addiction — trying to get through that, and hopefully he will.”

As fans know, followers of the comedian became skeptical of the 50-year-old’s excuse to cancel his appearance when he said he took antibiotics as a remedy — a medication that only fights bacteria, not viruses.

As Radar previously reported, Lange was hospitalized multiple times this year due to drug related issues. As recent as October, Lange cancelled a show in Akron, Ohio after having to make an emergency trip to the hospital for a blood sugar problem. In July, he was hospitalized for days following emergency open heart surgery.

Godspeed funny man Artie Lange. Please don't end up like John Belushi or Chris Farley. Artie Lange is a cat and he is on his ninth life...

SOURCE