COMING SOON: BING CROSBY - KRAFT MUSIC HALL TIME VOLUME 2

Hot off the presses, we just got the track details for the new Kraft Music Hall compliation, which will be issued by Sepia! Some nice gems!

This release follows on from Volume 1 and new transfers have allowed us to present these 80-year-old discs in the best possible sound quality.

Bing Crosby hosted the prestigious Kraft Music Hall broadcast from 1936-1946 on NBC. Bing's custom on the KMH was to sing the hit songs of the day as well as his own recordings. This double CD follows on from Vol. 1 of Kraft Music Hall Time and new transfers have allowed us to present these 80-year-old discs in the best possible sound quality.

Track Listing

Disc 1:
Remember Me?
If It's the Last Thing I Do
Sweet Stranger
Once in a While
Pale Venetian Moon
You’re a Sweetheart
This Is My Night to Dream
Show Me the Way to Go Home
The Dipsy Doodle
Moonlight Bay
I See Your Face Before Me
Thanks for the Memory
An Old Flame Never Dies
My Heart Is Taking Lessons
The Gypsy in My Soul
Home Town
Call Me up Some Rainy Afternoon
Love Walked In
One Song
You’re an Education
Hello Hawaii, How Are You
I've Got a Pocketful of Dreams
Missouri Waltz
Lilacs in the Rain
Looking At the World through Rose-Coloured Glasses
Vagabond Dreams
My Little Girl
Indian Summer
I'm Waiting For Ships That Never Come In
Between 18th and 19th on Chestnut Street
Ooh! What You Said
Little Girl
Last Night's Gardenias

Disc 2:
Yours Is My Heart Alone
Angel in Disguise
She Is the Sunshine of Virginia
Virginia Lee
On Behalf of the Visiting Firemen
Till the Clouds Roll By
Do I Worry?
Aloha Oe
Brahms' Lullaby
Daisy Bell
Loch Lomond
Nell and I
It Was Wonderful Then
Maria Elena
Play, Fiddle, Play
The Hut-Sut Song
Clementine
Easy Street
Because of You
You Talk Too Much
Ballin' the Jack
Humpty Dumpty Heart
Bi-I-Bi
Someday, Sweetheart
Down The Road a Piece
My Buddy
Medley from 'Star-Spangled Rhythm' [That Old Black Magic - Hit the Road to Dreamland - Old Glory]
Personality
It's Anybody's Spring
Day by Day

JACK BENNY AND ANAHEIM

On Sunday evening, January 7, 1945, Anaheim’s war news weary residents sat down again to listen to the nation’s favorite radio entertainer, Mr. Sunday Night himself, Jack Benny. Heard locally on KFI radio at 4 p.m. (for New York broadcast at 7 p.m. EST) and sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes, this night’s broadcast would be like no other before and forever change our community of Anaheim. On this show, Jack’s writers conceived 3 new characters and devices that were to remain among the most popular in broadcasting. We learned about penny-pinching Jack’s underground “vault” with its outlandish protection systems as well as meeting a young Sheldon Leonard playing the gravel-voiced “Race Track Tout.” The third “bit,” intended as a once-used throwaway line, will be long remembered by 3 Southern California communities.

The story goes like this: the L.A. Union Station conductor (played by Mel Blanc) announces to Jack’s entourage heading to New York: “Train leaving on Track 5 for Anaheim, Azusa and Cuc----amonga!” While Jack seems oblivious to the recitation of these rhythmic names, the residents of Anaheim are in disbelief. Known as the capital of the Valencia orange empire and the pre-war training grounds of Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics, the name Anaheim was never known as a household word or the subject of national radio comedy. Regardless the 3 stops were not even on the same Santa Fe Railroad line, the audience response to Mel Blanc’s booming announcement was very positive and this bit was used often during Jack’s radio years and was heard again when Jack came to Television in the early 1950’s.

The national recognition that these 3 towns were starting to receive (humorous or not) was not lost on their local Chambers of Commerce. Wartime issues were still of top community interest but once hostilities ended, efforts began to “adopt” Jack as each town’s native son. Every plan must have a leader and Anaheim had Mr. Ernest W. Moeller, the Secretary-Manager of the Chamber of Commerce. Moeller, Chet Burke (The Anaheim Gazette Editor), Cornelius Smith from Azusa and Clifton Chappell of unincorporated Cucamonga began a campaign in late 1945 to declare Jack Honorary Mayor of the 3 communities...

SOURCE

MARY LIVINGSTONE: THE WOMAN BEHIND BENNY

My favorite comedian of all-time was Jack Benny. His personna of being a cheapskate, forever 39, and a bachelor was nothing further from the truth. Not only was he generous, but he always was married for many years to one woman - who was his partner on and off the stage. Mary Livingstone, born Sadie Marks on June 23, 1905,  was an American radio comedienne and the wife and radio partner of comedy great Jack Benny. Enlisted almost entirely by accident to perform on her husband's popular program, she proved a talented comedienne. But she also proved one of the rare performers – Barbra Streisand would prove to be another – to experience severe stage fright years after her career was established — so much so that she retired from show business completely, after two decades in the public eye, almost three decades before her death, and at the height of her husband and partner's fame.

Born in Seattle, but raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, Livingstone's father was a Jewish immigrant from Romania. She came from a family of merchants and traders who had worked their way across Canada.  She met her future husband, Jack Benny, at a Passover seder at her family home when she was 14; Benny was invited by his friend Zeppo (b. Herbert) Marx while Benny and the Marx Brothers were in town together to perform. Sadie developed a near-instant crush on the funny, somewhat shy man eleven years her senior. But when he inadvertently insulted her by excusing himself for the night in the midst of her violin performance, she got her revenge the next night. She took three girlfriends to the theater where Benny performed, sitting in the front row and making sure not to laugh. Benny said later it drove him nuts that he couldn't get the four girls to laugh at anything.

Three years later, aged 17, Sadie visited California with her family while Jack Benny was in the same town for a show. Still nursing a small crush on the comedian, Sadie went to the theater to re-introduce herself to him. As he approached her in a hallway, she smiled and said, "Hello, Mr. Benny, I'm..." But he curtly cut her off with a "Hello," and continued on his way down the hall without pausing; she learned much later that when Benny was deep in thought about his work, it was nearly impossible to get his attention otherwise.

They met again a few years later — while she was said to be working as a lingerie salesgirl at a May Department Stores branch store in downtown Los Angeles — and the couple finally began dating. Invited on a double-date by a friend who had married Sadie's sister, Babe, Benny brought Sadie along to keep him company. This time, the couple clicked: Jack was finally smitten with Sadie and asked her on another date. She turned him down at first — she was seeing another young man — but Benny persisted. He visited her at The May Company almost daily and was reputed to buy so much ladies' hosiery from her he helped her set a sales record; he also called her several times a day when on the road.

As part of Benny's vaudeville act; she was still known as Sadie at the timeSadie took part in some of Jack's vaudeville performances but never thought of herself as a full-time performer, seeming glad to be done with it when he moved to radio in 1932. Then came the day he called her at home and asked her to come to the studio quickly. An actress hired to play a part on the evening's show didn't show up and, instead of risking a hunt for a substitute, Benny thought his wife could handle the part: a character named "Mary Livingstone" scripted as Benny's biggest fan.

At first, it seemed like a brief role — she played the part on that night's and the following week's show before being written out of the scenario. But NBC received so much fan mail that the character was revived into a regular feature on the Benny show, and the reluctant Sadie Marks became a radio star in her own right. Mary Livingstone underwent a change, too: from fan to tart secretary-foil; the character occasionally went on dates with Benny's character but they were rarely implied to be truly romantically involved otherwise. The lone known exceptions were a fantasy sequence used on both the radio and television versions of the show, as well as during an NBC musical tribute to Benny, in which Mary admitted to being "Mrs. Benny."

Livingstone soon enough displayed her own sharp wit and pinpoint comic timing, often used to puncture Benny's on-air ego, and she became a major part of the show, enough so that, giving in when she was addressed as "Mary Livingstone" often enough when out in public, she ended up changing her name legally to Mary Livingstone. Years later, her husband admitted how strange it felt to call her Sadie, even in private. They would also adopt a girl named Joan in 1939. Joan was always close to her father, but unfortunately did not have the same closeness with her mother.

Mary's trademark bit on the radio show, other than haranguing Benny, was to read letters from her mother (who lived in Plainfield, New Jersey), usually beginning with, My darling daughter Mary... and often including comical stories about Mary's (fictional) sister Babe – similar to Sadie's real sister Babe in name only – who was so masculine she played as a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers and worked in steel mills and coal mines; or, their ne'er-do-well father, who always seemed to be a half-step ahead of the law. Mother Livingstone, naturally enough, detested Benny and was forever advising her daughter to quit his employ.

Never all that comfortable as a performer despite her success, Livingstone's stage fright became so acute by the time the Benny show was moving toward television that she rarely appeared on the radio show in its final season, 1954-55. When she did appear, the Bennys' adopted daughter, Joan, occasionally acted as a stand-in for her mother; or Mary's lines were read in rehearsals by Jack's script secretary, Jeanette Eyman, while Livingstone's pre-recorded lines were played during live broadcasts. Livingstone made few appearances on the television version – mostly in filmed episodes – and finally retired from show business after her close friend Gracie Allen did in 1958.

George Burns revealed in his memoir Gracie: A Love Story (1988) that he and his wife and performing partner Gracie Allen loved Jack Benny, but merely tolerated Mary, whom they disliked. Lucille Ball felt the same way, referring to Mary as a "hard-hearted Hannah". Livingstone's relationship with their adopted daughter, Joan, was strained. In Sunday Nights at Seven (1990), her father's unfinished memoir that she completed with her own recollections, Joan Benny revealed she rarely felt close to her mother, and the two often argued.

Mary Livingstone's brother, Hilliard Marks (1913-1982), was a radio and television producer who worked primarily for his brother-in-law Jack Benny. After writing a biography of her husband, Mary Livingstone — whose surname is often misspelled without the 'e', as with her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to radio — died from cardiovascular disease at her home in Holmby Hills, California on June 30, 1983, aged 78, hours after receiving a visit from then-First Lady Nancy Reagan, as daughter Joan noted, where the two women enjoyed a private manicure appointment, and seven days after her 78th birthday. "The doctor said it was a heart attack", Joan wrote, "but I have always felt she just gradually faded out of life."

Mary Livingstone is interred beside her husband in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. After Jack Benny died on Christmas Day 1974, he had Mary sent a rose every day for the rest of her life. In those years, it was estimated that Mary received 3200 roses. Mary Livingstone was truly the woman behind the man, no matter what her flaws...

FORGOTTEN ONES: BOB BURNS

According to my wife, I like anything that was made before 1950. I guess to a degree, that is true. I do gravitate to anything nostalgic or sentimental, but there are some older stars that I just never really get. It's not that I do not like them, I just do not understand their appeal. One of those forgotten so-called nostalgic stars was radio comedian Bob Burns. Burns played a novelty musical instrument of his own invention, which he called a "bazooka". During World War II, the US Army's handheld anti-tank rocket launcher was nickamed the "bazooka".

He was born Robin Burn on August 2, 1890 in Greenwood, Arkansas. When he was three years old, his family moved to Van Buren, Arkansas. As a boy, Burns played trombone and cornet in the town's "Queen City Silver Cornet Band". At 13, he formed his own string band.  Practicing in the back of Hayman's Plumbing Shop one night, he picked up a length of gas pipe and blew into it, creating an unusual sound. With modifications, this became a musical instrument he named a "bazooka" (after "bazoo", meaning a windy fellow, from the Dutch bazuin for "trumpet"). A photograph shows him playing his invention in the Silver Cornet Band. Functioning like a crude trombone, the musical bazooka had a narrow range, but this was intentional. Burns also studied civil engineering and worked as a peanut farmer, but by 1911 was primarily an entertainer.

During World War I Burns enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He sailed to France with the Marine 11th Regiment. As a sergeant, he became the leader of the Marine Corps's jazz band in Europe. Burns made another "bazooka" from stove pipes and a whiskey funnel, which he sometimes played with the Corps band. After the war, Burns returned to the stage, often playing the bazooka as part of his act. He used it as a prop when telling hillbilly stories and jokes. Burns became known as The Arkansas Traveler and The Arkansas Philosopher. His stage persona was a self-effacing, rustic bumpkin with amusing stories about "the kinfolks" back home in Van Buren.

In 1930, Burns auditioned for a major Los Angeles radio station. He had prepared a 10 minute performance, but was asked to do 30 minutes, which he filled out with improvised stories and bazooka tunes. The managers did not care for his prepared material, but were impressed by his improvised material. Burns was hired. He appeared on an afternoon show, "The Fun Factory", as a character called "Soda Pop".

In 1935, on a visit to New York, Burns asked bandleader and radio star Paul Whiteman for an audition. Whiteman put Burns on his nightly show, the Kraft Music Hall, which was broadcast nationally; Burns was a big hit. Burns also became a regular on Rudy Vallee's show The Fleischmann Hour. Burns returned to Los Angeles in 1936, where Kraft Music Hall was now hosted by Bing Crosby. Burns was a regular, playing the bazooka and telling tall tales about his fictional hillbilly relatives, Uncle Fud and Aunt Doody.

Bob Burns was the host of The 10th Academy Awards held on March 10, 1938 at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Originally scheduled to be held on March 3, 1938, the ceremony was postponed due to heavy flooding in Los Angeles. In 1941, Burns was given his own radio show, called The Arkansas Traveler (1941-43) and he followed that up with The Bob Burns Show (1943-47).

His last performance was on January 30, 1955, on The Ed Sullivan Show (then called Toast of the Town). Bob left show business in the earlt 1950s though. A wealthy man from his land investments, Burns spent his final years on his 200-acre model farm in Canoga Park, California. Married three times, Bob Burns also had three children. (At one time he was married to entertainer Judy Canova). Burns sadly died of kidney cancer in Encino, California on February 2, 1956, at the age of 65. He is not very well remembered today, but his homespun humor was part Will Rogers and part Jed Clampett. Even though I never thought he was overly funny, he was a popular fixture, especially in radio in the late 1930s and early 1940s...

EDDIE ANDERSON: MORE THAN ROCHESTER

One of the most successful shows on radio and the earlier days of television was The Jack Benny Show. Jack Benny was a talented actor and comedian, but he will even admit that he owed his success to the great comic actors and actresses he surrounded himself with. One of the best supporting players on the show was the underrated Eddie Anderson. Even though today it looks dated to portray a black man servant, Anderson was never the butt of the jokes, Jack Benny was. Eddie Anderson was so much more than the Rochester character he portrayed for decades as well.

Anderson was born Edmund Lincoln Anderson on September 15, 1908 in Oakland, California. His father, "Big Ed" Anderson, was a minstrel performer, while his mother, Ella Mae, had been a tightrope walker until her career was ended by a fall. Anderson started in show business as part of an all African-American revue at age 14, later working in vaudeville with his brother, Cornelius. Anderson's vocal cords were ruptured when he was a youngster selling newspapers in San Francisco. The newsboys believed those who were able to shout the loudest sold the most papers. The permanent damage done to his vocal cords left him with the gravel voice familiar to both radio listeners and television viewers over a course of more than twenty years.

Anderson's first appearance on The Jack Benny Program was on March 28, 1937. He was originally hired to play the one-time role of a redcap on the Benny program. The Benny show received a large amount of mail about Anderson's appearances on the radio program; Benny decided to make him part of the cast as his butler and valet, Rochester van Jones. Neither Benny nor Anderson could recall how they came up with the name of Rochester for Anderson's character. Anderson always credited Benny for the invention of the Rochester van Jones name, saying that the name was copyrighted and that Benny later on sold it to him for a dollar.When Anderson became a regular member of the Benny show cast, he became the first African-American to have a regular role on a nationwide radio program.

Among the most highly-paid performers of his time, Anderson invested wisely and became extremely wealthy. Until the 1950s, Anderson was the highest paid African-American actor, receiving an annual salary of $100,000. In 1962, Anderson was on Ebony magazine's list of the 100 wealthiest African-Americans. Despite this, he was so strongly identified with the "Rochester" role that many listeners of the radio program mistakenly persisted in the belief that he was Benny's actual valet. One such listener drove Benny to distraction when he sent him a scolding letter concerning Rochester's alleged pay, and then sent another letter to Anderson, which urged him to sue Benny. In reality, Anderson did well enough to have his own valet.  A similar letter came from a correspondent in the South who was angered that on an episode of the radio show where Benny was sparring with Anderson, Benny allowed himself to be struck by Anderson. Benny retorted in a letter that it would not have been humorous the other way around. Anderson would appear with Jack Benny even after Benny's weekly series ended in 1965. Upon Benny's death in 1974, a tearful Anderson, interviewed for television, spoke of Benny with admiration and respect.

What a lot of people didn't know is Anderson had an astute business sense; in 1948, he saw the value and potential of Las Vegas as an entertainment center. With the idea of building and operating a hotel and casino there where African-Americans would be welcome, he asked for investors to join him in the venture. Anderson failed to attract enough people willing to invest, and he was unable to complete the plan. When the Moulin Rouge Hotel, an integrated hotel and casino, opened in 1955, Anderson was brought in for its opening. He expressed regret at the thought that the hotel might have been his if he had the further financial backing.

In 1932 Anderson married Mamie Wiggins Nelson. After 22 years of marriage, Mamie died August 5, 1954, after a two-year battle with cancer. Mamie was 43. At the time of her death, her son Billy (whom Eddie had adopted) was playing professional football for the Chicago Bears. Eddie Anderson married beauty Evangela 'Eva' Simon in Kingman, Arizona on February 8, 1956; the couple had three children: daughters Stephanie and Evangela Jr. ("Eva"), and son Edmund Jr. Eva and Anderson divorced in 1973 with Anderson retaining custody of his minor son and daughter.

Eddie Anderson died of heart disease on February 28, 1977 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Los Angeles, California. He was buried in Los Angeles in historic Evergreen Cemetery, the oldest existing cemetery in the city. In one last philanthropic gesture, it was his intention to will his sizable home after his death. The house at 1932 Rochester Cir. in Los Angeles, was to be used to house at-risk substance sober-living residence for homeless substance abusers. Three decades after his death, The Eddie Rochester Anderson Foundation in Los Angeles ("The Rochester House"), helps troubled men transition into society. The Rochester House opened its doors in 1989, and is dedicated in memory of Eddie Anderson.

Many African-American entertainers during the 1930s and 1940s were treatedly horribly by the industry. I am sure Eddie Anderson had his share of bigotry and injustice, but it is nice to hear how Eddie Anderson had a good career in the business and did a lot of wonderful things in addition to making people smile...

FORGOTTEN ONES: FRED ALLEN

When the movies got sound, a lot of actors just could not adapt. It was a medium that chewed up and spit out a lot of talented people. Another medium that did this (but to a lesser degree) was television. Many radio stars who were popular in the 1930s and 1940s, found themselves out of work in the 1950s.

Even though Fred Allen appeared on television, I do not think he obtained the level of fame he once had in radio. Personally, Fred Allen was not much of a comedian, but his radio show from 1932 to 1949 was one of the most popular shows of radio's golden age. Unfortunately, if I would ask 100 people under 60 who Fred Allen was - they would not know. Yes, Fred Allen has been gone for 55 years, but his talent and his humor should not be underestimated and forgotten.

Born on May 31, 1894, Fred Allen was more of a humorist than a comedian. His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny, but it was only part of his appeal; radio historian John Dunning (in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio) wrote that Allen was radio's most admired comedian and most frequently censored. A master adlibber, Allen often tangled with his network's executives (and often barbed them on the air over the battles), while developing routines the style and substance of which influenced contemporaries and futures among comic talents, including Groucho Marx, Stan Freberg, Henry Morgan and Johnny Carson, but his fans also included President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and novelists William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and Herman Wouk (who began his career writing for Allen).

Fred Allen's first taste of radio came while he and his wife Portland Hoffa waited for a promised slot in a new Arthur Hammerstein musical. In the interim, they appeared on a Chicago station's program, WLS Showboat, into which, Allen recalled, "Portland and I were presented... to inject a little class into it." Their success in these appearances helped their theater reception; live audiences in the Midwest liked to see their radio favorites in person, even if Allen and Hoffa would be replaced by Bob Hope when the radio show moved to New York several months afterward.

Allen's show was top rated through 1946. Allen was able to negotiate a lucrative new contract as a result not only of the show's success, but thanks in large measure to NBC's anxiety to keep more of its stars from joining Jack Benny in a wholesale defection to CBS. The CBS talent raids broke up NBC's hit Sunday night, and Benny also convinced George Burns and Gracie Allen and Bing Crosby to join his move.

But a year later, he was knocked off his perch, not by a talent raid but by a show on a third rival network, ABC (the former NBC Blue network). The quiz show, Stop the Music, hosted by Bert Parks, required listeners to participate live, by telephone. The show became a big enough hit to break into Allen's grip on that Sunday night time slot. At first, Allen fought fire with his own kind of fire: he offered $5,000 to any listener getting a call from Stop the Music or any similar game show while listening to The Fred Allen Show. He never had to pay up, nor was he shy about lampooning the game show phenomenon (especially a riotous parody of another quiz show Parks hosted, lancing Break the Bank in a routine called "Break the Contestant" in which players didn't receive a thing but were compelled to give up possessions when they blew a question.)

Unfortunately, Allen fell to number 38 in the ratings, as television began its rise as well. By this time, he had changed the show again somewhat, changing the famed "Allen's Alley" skits to take place on "Main Street," and rotating a new character or two in and out of the lineup. He stepped down from radio again in 1949, at the end of his show's regular season, as much under his doctor's orders as because of his slipping ratings. He decided to take a year off, but it did more for his health (he suffered from hypertension) than his career; after the June 26, 1949 show, on which Henry Morgan and Jack Benny guested, Fred Allen never hosted another radio show full time again.

Allen tried three short-lived television projects of his own but they all failed. Allen finally held down a two-year stint as a panelist on the CBS quiz show What's My Line? from 1954 until his death in 1956 (March 17, 1956). Allen actually appeared as a Mystery Guest on What's My Line? on July 17, 1955, when he was taking a week off from the show to have an emergency appendectomy. Afterwards he joked about the operation: "It was an emergency. The doctor needed some money hurriedly."

Allen also spent his final years as a newspaper columnist/humorist and as a memoirist, renting a small New York office to work six hours a day without distractions. He wrote Treadmill to Oblivion (1954, reviewing his radio and television years) and Much Ado About Me (1956, covering his childhood and his vaudeville and Broadway years, and detailing especially vaudeville at its height with surprising objectivity); the former – which included many of his vintage radio scripts – was the best-selling book on radio's classic period for many years.

Allen is buried at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York (his headstone has both his real and stage names) and has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: a radio star on 6709½ Hollywood Blvd. and a TV star on 7021 Hollywood Blvd. His widow, Portland Hoffa, married bandleader Joe Rimes in 1959 and celebrated a second silver wedding anniversary well before her own death of natural causes in Los Angeles on Christmas Day, 1990. Fred Allen is not remembered well today, but his humor inspired many people in the days before television and the internet. Like so many of the stars of yesteryear, Allen deserves to be remembered more than he is...

RIP: VOICE OF THE LONE RANGER

Fred Foy, an announcer best known for his booming, passionate lead-ins to "The Lone Ranger" radio and television series, died Wednesday of natural causes at his Woburn, Mass., home, his daughter said. He was 89.

Nancy Foy said her father worked as an actor before landing the job as the announcer and narrator on "The Lone Ranger" radio show in 1948.

The show's live lead-in introduced its masked cowboy hero and his trusted horse with the line: "A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty 'Hi-Yo Silver!' ... The Lone Ranger!"

Foy's dramatic introduction and narration, performed in a powerful baritone, were so good it "made many people forget there were others before him," said radio historian Jim Harmon, who called him "perhaps the greatest announcer-narrator in the history of radio drama.

"He pronounced words like no one else ever had — 'SIL-ver,' 'hiss-TOR-ee.' But hearing him, you realized everyone else had been wrong," Harmon wrote in his book, "Radio Mystery and Adventure and Its Appearances in Film, Television and Other Media."

Foy never tired of giving a spirited rendition of "The Lone Ranger" introduction to anyone, anywhere, who would ask, his daughter said.

"Dad would do the intro at the drop of a hat," she said. "He loved it. He loved for us to let people know so he would be asked to do it."

Foy was born in Detroit in 1921, graduated from that city's Eastern High School in 1938 and landed a job on the announcing staff of radio station WXYZ in Detroit in 1942. He was drafted into the Army that year and served in an Armed Forces Radio unit in Cairo during World War II.

Foy returned to WXYZ in 1945, then three years later won the job on "The Lone Ranger," even stepping into the lead role for one radio broadcast when actor Brace Beemer had laryngitis.

Foy's son, Fritz Foy, said the introduction's signature opening line, "Hi-Yo, Silver!" was done by an actor on the radio show, though his father belted it out for the TV series.

Foy also performed on radio series including "The Green Hornet" and "Sgt. Preston of the Yukon."

In 1960, Foy began working for the ABC network. He spent five years as an announcer on the "The Dick Cavett Show" and narrated documentaries. He left ABC in the mid-1980s and later retired to Woburn, Nancy Foy said.

Foy is survived by his wife of 63 years, Frances Foy, their three children and three grandchildren.

JACK BENNY (1894-1974)

Another one of the greatest comedians of all time was Jack Benny. Even though he died the year I was born, he has always been one of my favorites. Ensemble shows like "Seinfeld", "Frasier", and "The Office" owe a lot to Jack Benny. Here are some funny moments with Jack Benny...